Finnegans Wake - James Joyce [22]
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
was with reason the richer for a wouldbe ballad, to the balledder of which the world of cumannity singing owes a tribute for having placed on the planet’s melomap his lay of the vilest bogeyer but most attractionable avatar the world has ever had to explain for. This, more krectly lubeen or fellow — me — lieder was first poured forth where Riau Liviau riots and col de Houdo humps, under the shadow of the monument of the shouldhavebeen legislator (Eleutheriodendron!
Spare, woodmann, spare!) to an over— flow meeting of all the nations in Lenster fullyfilling the visional area and, as a singleminded supercrowd, easily representative, what with masks, whet with faces, of all sections and cross sections (wineshop and cocoahouse poured out to brim up the broaching) of our liffeyside people (to omit to mention of the mainland minority and such as had wayfared via Watling, Ernin, Icknild and Stane, in chief a halted cockney car with its quotal of Hardmuth’s hacks, a northern tory, a southern whig, an eastanglian chronicler and a landwester guardian) ranging from slips of young dublinos from Cutpurse Row having nothing better to do than walk about with their hands in their kneepants, sucking airwhackers, weedulicet, jumbobricks, side by side with truant officers, three woollen balls and poplin in search of a croust of pawn to busy professional gentlemen, a brace of palesmen with dundrearies, nooning toward Daly’s, fresh from snipehitting and mallardmissing on Rutland heath, exchanging cold sneers, mass-going ladies from Hume Street in their chairs, the bearers baited, some wandering hamalags out of the adjacent cloverfields of Mosse’s Gardens, an oblate father from Skinner’s Alley, brick-layers, a fleming, in tabinet fumant, with spouse and dog, an aged hammersmith who had some chisellers by the hand, a bout of cudgel players, not a few sheep with the braxy, two bluecoat scholars, four broke gents out of Simpson’s on the Rocks, a portly and a pert still tassing Turkey Coffee and orange shrub in tickeyes door, Peter Pim and Paul Fry and then Elliot and, O, Atkinson, suffering hell’s delights from the blains of their annui-tants’ acorns not forgetting a deuce of dianas ridy for the hunt, a particularist prebendary pondering on the roman easter, the ton-sure question and greek uniates, plunk em, a lace lappet head or two or three or four from a window, and so on down to a few good old souls, who, as they were juiced after taking their pledge over at the uncle’s place, were evidently under the spell of liquor, from the wake of Tarry the Tailor a fair girl, a jolly postoboy thinking off three flagons and one, a plumodrole, a half sir from the weaver’s almshouse who clings and clings and chatchatchat clings to her, a wholedam’s cloudhued pittycoat, as child, as curiolater, as Caoch O’Leary. The wararrow went round, so it did, (a nation wants a gaze) and the ballad, in the felibrine trancoped metre affectioned by Taiocebo in his Casudas de Poulichinello Artahut, stump-stampaded on to a slip of file:///E|/Books/Top%20100%20Novels%20list/Finnegans%20Wake/complete.html[9/12/2007 12:21:58 PM]
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
blancovide and headed by an excessively rough and red woodcut, privately printed at the rimepress of Delville, soon fluttered its secret on white highway and brown byway to the rose of the winds and the blew of the gaels, from archway to lattice and from black hand to pink ear, village crying to village, through the five pussyfours green of the united states of Scotia Picta—and he who denays it, may his hairs be rubbed in dirt! To the added strains (so peacifold) of his majesty the flute, that onecrooned king of inscrewments, Piggott’s purest, ciello alsoliuto, which Mr Delaney (Mr Delacey?), horn, anticipating a perfect downpour of plaudits