25 August 2024

To Proceed

 

To Proceed (RFW 053.37–054.15)

The last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake comprise an episode known as The Battery at the Gate―a retelling of HCE’s Crime in the Park, Original Sin, and Oedipal Encounter with the Cad. This short paragraph, which follows the description of HCE’s coffin, concludes the first of the three subsections into which the Battery may be divided: Diversified Outrages (RFW 049.30–054.15). As Bill Cadbury explains in How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake, Joyce drafted Diversified Outrages after the second subsection, Camelback Excesses, as an alternative to the latter, but in the end he decided to use both (Slote & Crispi 71–76).

First-Draft Version

The first draft of Diversified Outrages comprised one long continuous paragraph. The present paragraph began life as the last half-dozen lines or so:

The conscientious guard in the other case swore that Laddy Cumine, the butcher in the blouse, after having delivered some carcasses went & kicked at the door and when challenged on his oath by the imputed, said simply: ― I am on my oath, you did, as I stressed before. ― You are deeply mistaken, sir, let me tell you, denied McPartland. ―Hayman 73

The final version, which runs to eighteen lines in The Restored Finnegans Wake―twenty in the first edition―is only vaguely reminiscent of this brief courtroom exchange. In the earlier draft a guard―ie an Irish policeman, or member of An Gárda Síochána―gives evidence against Laddy Cumine. But in the final version Long Lally Tobkids is a special (ie a special constable) who swears like a Norwegian tailor while giving evidence against a queer sort of a man. In Finnegans Wake, HCE’s curate and manservant Sackerson (S) is often depicted as a constable or policeman, and on his first appearance he is described as both Comestipple and a quhare soort of a mahan (RFW 013.04–06). The Norwegian Captain is HCE, but Kersse the Tailor is the Oedipal Figure.

Adaline Glasheen is also unsure who is involved―her uncertainty is flagged by the leading asterisk:

  • Lally or Long Lally Tobkids (or Tomkins … )―is associated with the Four, save on p. 67 [RFW 053–054] where he is a policeman (see Sacksoun) and is both male and female. Lally references in Scribbledehobble [Connolly 16, 56, 82] suggest a male and a priest, but 67.12–13 [RFW 054.02–03] suggests a dissenting preacher. The use of the ablaut [a change of vowel] … suggests he-she is not distinct from Lily, who as Susanna is associated with the Four Elders. There is probably a simple solution to this “… contradicting all about Lally” [RFW 302.27]. ―Glasheen 158

 

Adaline Glasheen & Cyril Connolly

Meanwhile, McPartland has become MackPartland (the meatmam’s family, and the oldest in the world except nick, name). Earlier, the Cad was described as Meathman or Meccan? (RFW 041.35). Does this mean that MackPartland is the Cad? But FWEET gives the following gloss:

  • Irish: Mac Parthaláin, son of Bartholomew.

HCE is called Bartholomew Porter in III.4 (RFW 436.18). So, is MackPartland one of his sons? In Irish mythology Partholón was the first invader of Ireland after the Flood. His name was derived from the Latin Bartholomaeus, which was thought to mean son of he who stays the waters (Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 7:9).

This confusing blend of characters is one of the most frustrating things about Finnegans Wake. S seems to be giving evidence against himself and against the sons of HCE. But the stuttering in the final version is a sign of HCE’s guilt, so HCE is also giving evidence against himself.

Cumine is a genuine surname of Breton origin―other sources trace it to Irish Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic. In Ireland it took the form Comyn. In the 12th century John Comyn succeeded Dublin’s Patron Saint Laurence O’Toole as Archbishop of Dublin. Is Laddy Cumine a conflation of Larry O’Toole and John Comyn? The interchange of the letters L and R is common throughout Finnegans Wake (O’Hehir 392–393). Later in Finnegans Wake Shem & Shaun will be represented by Laurence O’Toole and his contemporary Thomas à Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

 

Tom King & Samuel Phelps

In the final version we also have the names Phillyps Captain and Phelps, which Glasheen glosses thus:

  • Phelps (or Phillips), Captain―his opponent is Tomkins. Thus may be included two Dublin actors, Phelps and Tom King; but the Philip and Tom are larger themes. See Lally. ―Glasheen 232

Thomas King and Samuel Phelps were English actors who appeared on the stage in Dublin. Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson interpret Phillyps as fill lips, implying that the accused had been completely drunk (Campbell & Robinson 75). This is supported by his hiccup (hickicked), as John Gordon notes 67.19.

Continuity with the previous paragraph―a description of HCE’s coffin―is provided by the allusions to the delivery of meat and carcasses by the butcher. Eastman’s Limited was a firm of victuallers (ie butchers) on South Great George’s Street. Note, however, the echo of the Mutt & Jute Episode, which is glossed by Campbell & Robinson:

 

South Great George’s Street

After delivering some _mutt_on chops and meat jutes on behalf of Messrs. Otto Sands and Eastman, Limerick, Victualers … ―Campbell & Robinson 75

In a footnote they add:

The Mutt and Jute episode was a greatly distorted dream variant of the archetypal Park encounter between HCE (Jute) and the Native Antagonist (Mutt). This antagonist is, variously, the Cad, the masked assailant, the policeman, and the ballad gentry. ―Campbell & Robinson 75 fn *

Remember that HCE’s fall is precipitated by the Oedipal Invader, who then becomes the new HCE, while the old HCE becomes his servant. Thus Mutt began as HCE but ended up as S, while Jute began as the Oedipal Figure but ended up as HCE. This is why they swop hats (RFW 013.11). To further complicate matters, the Oedipal Figure embodies both of HCE’s sons, who are referenced―as Cain & Abel―by the Biblical quote in the last line of this paragraph:

And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. (Genesis 4:5)

And Glasheen’s detection of the Four Old Men in this passage seems to be confirmed by Messrs Otto Sands and Eastman, Limericked, which conceals the four cardinal points of North, South, East and West (Limerick is in the west of Ireland). The Four, who embody space, are associated with these directions. They are also the judges at HCE’s trial.

Chemistry in Finnegans Wake

One curious addition Joyce made to this paragraph when he revised it was the following piece of chemistry:

  • We might leave that nitrience of oxagiants to take its free of the air and just analectralyse that very chymirical combination, the gasbag where the warder works. And try to pour somour heiteroscene up the almostfere. In the bottled heliose case … [RFW 053.37–40]

Joyce was never particularly interested in science, but he wrote Finnegans Wake against the backdrop of one of the most remarkable revolutions in the history of physics. Einstein’s groundbreaking theories of relativity were still in their infancy, and thinkers like Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac were only beginning to uncover the secrets of the quantum world. In 1932, when Joyce was working on Book II of Finnegans Wake, an Irishman, Ernest Walton―in collaboration with his English colleague John Cockcroft―became the first person to artificially split the atom, confirming Einstein’s E=mc2.

An avant-garde work like Finnegans Wake could hardly ignore these developments. Joyce’s ambivalent attitude to science could be no bar. And that his attitude was ambivalent is clear from the following, which his brother Stanislaus wrote in his diary on 13 August 1904:

 

Stanislaus Joyce

It will be obvious that whatever method there is in Jim’s life is highly unscientific, yet in theory he approves only of the scientific method. About science he knows ‛damn all’, and if he has the same blood in him as I have he should dislike it. I call it a lack of vigilant reticence in him that he is ever-ready to admit the legitimacy of the scientist’s raids outside his frontiers. The word ‛scientific’ is always a word of praise in his mouth … Jim boasts―for he often boasts now―of being modern. ―Healey 53–34

In 1996 the linguist Harry Burrell wrote the definitive article on the subject of Chemistry and Physics in Finnegans Wake. Noting the decided lack of scientific texts in Joyce’s libraries, he surmised that the principal sources for the scientific elements in Finnegans Wake were The Encyclopædia Britannica and Joyce’s own memories of things he had learnt at school or in college. According to FWEET, however, the present passage draws on Henry Roscoe’s 1872 textbook Chemistry, which Joyce used about fifty times in the course of Finnegans Wake. This is supported by a number of notes he made in two of the Finnegans Wake notebooks, VI.B.45 and VI.B.15 (James Joyce Digital Archive).

 

Henry Roscoe

Burrell’s glosses on the passage quoted above are as follows:

067.07–8 “that nitrience of oxagiants to take its free of the air and just analectralyse” In the nitrogen fixation process of fertilizer manufacturing, air is passed through an electric arc causing the chemical combination of nitrogen and oxygen. Nitrous oxide and nitric oxide are the gases produced which could be kept in a “gasbag.”

067.08–9 “analectrolyse that very chymerical combination” This includes: analyse the chemical combination. Some analytical procedures involve electrolysis.

067.09–10 “pour somour heiterscene up thealmostfere” This sounds like: pour some more hydrogen up the atmosphere. Hydrogen, being lighter than air, has to be poured upward from one container to another, the receiving container being held up side down. Also hydrogen is lost from the earth’s atmosphere because the earth’s gravity can not retain it.

067.10 “bottled heliose” Helium is sold in steel bottles. ―Burrell 198–199

I assume Joyce added these elements because the case against HCE is just a lot of hot air. As John Gordon notes, the gasbag may also be a blimp.

 

The Military Airship La République over Paris (1908–09)

67.9: “gasbag:” blimp or dirigible, taking its “free of the air” (67.8). Given that they were lifted by hydrogen or helium, and that the latter shows up at 67.10 as “heliose,” I agree with C. George Sandeluscu in hearing “heiterscene,” on the next line, as echoing “hydrogen.” ―Gordon 67.9

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

 

A History of the City of Dublin

References

  • Harry Burrell, Chemistry and Physics in Finnegans Wake, Thomas F Staley (editor), Joyce Studies Annual, Volume 7, Pages 192–218, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1996)
  • Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
  • Thomas Edmund Connolly (editor), James Joyce’s Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for Finnegans Wake, Edited with Notes and an Introduction, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois (1961)
  • Michael Faraday, A Course of Six Lectures on the Various Forces of Matter, and Their Relations to Each Other, Richard Griffin and Company, London (1860)
  • Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
  • David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
  • George H Healey, The Complete Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (1971)
  • James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
  • James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
  • Brendan O’Hehir, A Gaelic Lexicon for Finnegans Wake, and Glossary for Joyce’s Other Works, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1967)
  • Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
  • Henry Roscoe, Chemistry, Macmillan and Co, London (1872)
  • John Warburton, James Whitelaw, Robert Walsh, A History of the City of Dublin, Volume 1, Volume 2, T Cadell & W Davies, London (1818)

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24 August 2024

Oxmanswold

 

Chambered Cairns at Knowth, County Meath (RFW 059.05–059.16)

The last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake comprise an episode known as The Battery at the Gate, in which HCE suffers a sustained assault at the hands of an outsider. The final three paragraphs can be read as a short coda to this episode. HCE’s attacker has departed, leaving his hapless victim cowering alone in his hideout. But throughout this chapter HCE has been identified with his own attacker:

A striking feature of this chapter is its tendency to let the figure of the hero and his antagonists become merged. ―Campbell & Robinson 78

From this perspective, the departure of the latter in the direction of the deaf-&-dumb institute can be interpreted as HCE’s own death. His place of refuge is now his tomb. The gist of this paragraph, as FWEET puts it, is:

he is gone―until he awakes again

First-Draft Version

As we have seen, the final four paragraphs of this chapter were additions to the first draft, which concluded with the bullocky proceeding in the direction of the deaf-&-dumb institute. When an early draft of the chapter was published in the third issue of transition in June 1927, only the second and fourth of these paragraphs had been added. The former read as follows:

Yet he made leave to many a door beside of Finglas wold for so witness his chambered cairns silent that are at browse up hill and down coombe and on eolithostroton, at Howth or at Coolock or even at Enniskerry. Oliver’s lambs we do call them and they shall be gathered unto him, their herd and paladin, in that day hwen he skall wake from earthsleep in his valle of briers and o’er dun and dale the Wulverulverlord (protect us!) his mighty horn skall roll, orland, roll. ―Jolas & Paul 49–50

For the final version, Joyce added several more allusions to this early draft, while leaving the basic gist of the paragraph unchanged. The published version differs slightly from that in Restored Finnegans Wake. For the most part, Rose & O’Hanlon have reordered some of the clauses. The only significant difference between their version and the first edition is the omission of the words a cloudletlitter after chambered cairns.

 

The Death of Roland

Charlemagne’s Paladins

This paragraph contains a few allusions to Charlemagne’s Paladins or Twelve Peers, the leading members of the Holy Roman Emperor’s court. These allusions all belong to the first draft. Joyce never added to them:

Charlemagne was endowed with the good and bad qualities of the epic king, and as in the case of Agamemnon and Arthur, his exploits paled beside those of his chief warriors. These were not originally known as the twelve peers famous in later Carolingian romance. The twelve peers were in the first instance the companions in arms of Roland in the Teutonic sense. The idea of the paladins forming an association corresponding to the Arthurian Round Table first appears in the romance of Fierabras. The lists of them are very various, but all include the names of Roland and Oliver. The chief heroes who fought Charlemagne’s battles were Roland; Ganelon, afterwards the traitor; Turpin, the fighting archbishop of Reims; Duke Naimes of Bavaria, the wise counsellor who is always on the side of justice; Ogier the Dane, the hero of a whole series of romances; and Guillaume of Toulouse, the defender of Narbonne. ―The Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh Edition) 5:895

  • Oliver’s lambs Oliver (French: Olivier) was Roland’s closest friend. According to Le Chanson de Roland, he died fighting alongside Roland at Roncevaux. Oliver’s lambs was an ironic nickname for Oliver Cromwell’s troops, who ravaged Ireland in the 1650s.

 

Oliver Cromwell at the Siege of Drogheda

  • their herd and paladin the Twelve Peers (French: douze pairs) of Charlemagne were also known as the Paladins, a term believed to derive from Rome’s Palatine Hill. Our word palace is of the same etymology, so paladin originally meant of the palace, implying that one so-called was a prominent member of the royal court. Although the word was originally applied specifically to Charlemagne’s Twelve Peers, in time it became a general synonym for knight errant. Here, the word herd means shepherd or herdsman, referring back to Oliver’s lambs.

  • the Wulverulverlord (protect us!) Here, it is the wolf who protects us from the lambs.

    • Danish: ulv, wolf.
    • overlord

  • his mighty horn skall roll, orland, roll In Le Chanson de Roland, Roland commands the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army, which is retreating from Spain over the Pyrenees. In the Pass of Roncevaux the Saracen ambush the rear guard. Although he and his troops are in dire staits, Roland is too proud to raise the alarm by sounding his great horn Oliphant. Only when all hope has fled does he finally relent and wind his horn. In Italy, Roland is called Orlando. This form of his name is better known from the comic epics Orlando Innamorato_ and Orlando Furioso by Matteo Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto.

    • Danish skal, shall.

    • Roll, Jordan, Roll is a Negro spiritual from America’s deep south.

    • Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean―roll! Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 4:179

    • Toll! Roland, toll! Theodore Tilton, The Great Bell Roland. This poem celebrates the famous bell in Ghent, Belgium, which was alluded to earlier in this chapter (RFW 045.23).

 

Arthur’s Tomb: The Last Meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere

These Carolingian elements are complemented by a few Arthurian allusions:

  • hven, same the lightning lancer of Azava Arthurhonoured Gwenhwyfar or Guinevere, Lancelot and Arthur, the primary love-triangle of Arthurian legend. Another Arthur―Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington―clashed with French troops on the banks of the Azava river in Salamanca, Spain, during the Peninsular War (25 September 1811).

  • same the save the, meaning except for, were it not for.

  • lost leaders live! the heroes return! … he skall wake from earthsleep Arthur was Rex Quondam Futurusque Rex: The Once and Future King. According to legend, he was not dead but merely sleeping, and he would one day awaken when his horn is sounded. Similar legends are recounted in relation to many other heroes, including Finn MacCumhail, who is also present in this paragraph:

    • as nubilettes to cumule Cumhall was Finn’s father. The cloudy associations are in keeping with a common thread that has been running through this chapter: poor weather, leading to limited visibility.

    • some Finn, some Finn avaunt! Irish: Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin Amháin, Ourselves, Ourselves Alone, the political slogan of Irish Nationalists from which the Republican party took its name.

Loose Ends

Finally, let us tie up some loose ends.

  • Yed Volapük yed, yet. The last word of the preceding page was also borrowed from Johann Martin Schleyer’s constructed language Volapük: adyoe, adieu, goodbye. Schleyer was Catholic priest, who believed that God had instructed him to create an international language for the benefit of mankind.

  • Danish med liv, with life.

 

Oxmantown

  • Oxmanswold Oxmantown was the settlement from which Dublin’s Northside grew. After the Anglo-Normans conquered Dublin in 1171, the native Scandinavians―Ostmen, or East Men―were expelled from the city and forced to settle on the other side of the Liffey.

  • chambered cairns ancient burial monuments, consisting of a cairn―a pile of stones―enclosing a chamber. Ireland’s passage graves―eg Newgrange, Knowth, Dowth, Loughcrew, Carrowmore―are chambered cairns.

  • a theory none too rectiline of the evoluation of human society An allusion to the Viconian Cycle of human history.

  • the testament of the rocks Hugh Miller, The Testimony of the Rocks. Miller was a Scottish geologist, who believed that that the earth sciences could be reconciled with the Biblical account of Creation―the testament of the rocks and the Old Testament.

  • skatterlings Danish skatter, treasure : Archaic scatterling, vagrant.

  • a stone … as nubilettes to cumule … Greenman Rise O In Finnegans Wake Shem & Shaun are often depicted as stem (green tree) and stone, while their sister Issy is a cloud overhead. Rose & O’Hanlon’s emendations have restored the close connection between these three elements. In the first edition, the reference to the children’s game Green Man Rise-O was displaced by several lines.

    • Latin nubila, clouds, mists
    • cumulus a large, white, puffy type of cloud
    • O The Viconian Cycle again

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

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21 August 2024

Bully Acre

 

Bully’s Acre (RFW 059.01–059.04)

This short paragraph brings to an end the episode known as The Battery at the Gate, which takes up the last ten pages of Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. In the preceding paragraphs HCE suffered an assault at the hands of a travelling salesman―or was it a reporter for a German newspaper?―who pegged a few stones at his tavern before slouching off in the direction of the deaf-and-dumb institutes in Cabra and Glasnevin. Is it significant that Glasnevin is also the site of Dublin’s largest cemetery? In Hosty’s Rann the dead were described as deaf and dumb:

And we’ll bury him down in Oxmanstown Along with the devil and Danes

(Chorus) With the deaf and dumb Danes, And all their remains. RFW 038.14–17

By the end of this chapter, HCE, who has been consistently identified in this chapter with his own attacker, will be dead. His chambered cairns are briefly described in the next paragraph, though his real burial will take place in the following chapter.

The final four paragraphs of this chapter were additions to the first draft, which concluded with the bullocky proceeding in the direction of the deaf & dumb institute. When an early draft of the chapter was published in transition in June 1927, only the second and fourth of these paragraphs had been written. The third paragraph was added in the early 1930s, when Joyce was preparing copy of Book I for the printers at Faber and Faber. The first paragraph, however, was a very late addition to the second set of galley proofs―dated to May 1938 by Rose & O’Hanlon.

The only alteration Joyce made to his first draft of this paragraph was the inclusion of the parenthetical clause if old Nestor Alexis would wink the worth for us. The meaning is fairly transparent: with the exit of the Bullocky, the Battery at the Gate and the siege of HCE’s refuge finally came to an end.

Sieges

Joyce has packed several historical sieges into this brief paragraph. Throughout the Battery at the Gate, HCE was besieged in a succession of refuges.

  • rochelly Michael William Balfe’s opera The Siege of Rochelle. This siege in 1627–28 forms the backdrop to Dumas’ novel The Three Musketeers. Balfe’s opera is based on another novel by Madame de Genlis. As John Gordon notes, the French: roche, rock is also relevant. HCE’s attacker was a pegger of stones.

 

Michael William Balfe

  • exetur exit, and Latin: exitus, exit, departure. In both English (medical) and Latin (figurative) exitus can also mean death. There is probably also an allusion to Exeter in Devon, which was besieged several times in its history:

    • 630 (approximately) by Penda of Mercia
    • 893 by the Danes
    • 1068 by William the Conqueror
    • 1549 during the Prayer Book Rebellion
    • 1643 by the Royalists during the English Civil War
    • 1645–46 by the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War

  • Bully Acre Bully’s Acre in Kilmainham is one of Dublin’s oldest cemeteries, possibly dating back to the 7th century. It was finally closed in 1832, when thousands of victim’s of that year’s cholera epidemic were buried there. There is also an allusion to the Palestinian city of Acre, which was besieged by the Crusaders in 1104 and by Napoleon in 1799. And, of course, Clontarf, the site in 1014 of one of Ireland’s bloodiest and most notable battles, takes its name from the Irish: cluain tarbh, bulls’ meadow. Finally, Bully Acre recalls the bullocky of the preceding paragraph.

  • stage the theatrical (and operatic) meaning is relevant.

  • siegings besiegings. German: siegen, to triumph. FWEET also glosses this as German: sie ging, she went, though I fail to see how this is relevant. Who is she? FWEET’s proceedings, however, does make sense.

  • recall rename. We would like to rename Dublin Bar-le-Duc and Dog-an-Doras and Bangen-op-Zoom.

  • old Nestor Alexis In Homer’s Iliad, Nestor, the King of Pylos, is the eldest of the Achaian leaders. The phrase old Nestor, occurs a number of times in the epic poem (eg 11:637). Nestor is also the second episode of Ulysses, in which Stephen teaches history to the boys, before discussing history with his elderly employer Mr Deasy. Nestor’s relevance here can only be his association with the Siege of Troy. Adaline Glasheen questions the allusion (Glasheen 205). I have no idea who Alexis refers to. In A Classical Lexicon to Finnegans Wake, Brendan O’Hehir glosses it as name of a shepherd in Virgil’s 2nd Eclogue, though I fail to see the relevance (O’Hehir 47). In Ancient Greek, the name means helper or defender.

  • wink the worth for us Wynkyn de Worde was an Alsatian-born printer and publisher, who worked with William Caxton in London. In Ulysses, Deasy (old Nestor) gets Stephen to arrange for the printing of his letter on foot-and-mouth disease in the Irish newspapers, in the hopes of getting the word out.

 

Bar-le-Duc in 1916

  • Bar-le-Duc A town in northeastern France. During the siege of Verdun (Battle of Verdun in 1916), Bar-le-Duc served as the staging area or assembly point for the besieged city’s essential supplies.

  • Dog-an-Doras Irish: deoch an dorais, parting drink (literally: the drink of the door). The wolf is at the door generally means that one is afflicted with hunger or poverty, which may be relevant here.

  • Bangen-op-Zoom Bergen-op-Zoom, a town in the Netherlands. It was frequently besieged. HCE’s besieger is banging on the door.

 

The Marketplace in Bergen-op-Zoom

Concerning the last three elements, John Gordon comments:

73.24–-5: “Bar-le-Duc and Dog-an-Doras and Bangen-op-Zoom:” I suggest that these three proposed names all contain elements adding up to: bar the door that someone is banging on. McHugh notes that Bar-le-Duc was the “staging area for the Battle of Verdun,” and the famous line coming out of that battle was “Ils ne passeront pas” [They shall not pass]. Medals and posters celebrating the battle sometimes show a French man or woman (Joan of Arc) blocking a door, gate, passageway, etc. ―Gordon 73.24–5

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

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To Proceed

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