Finnegans Wake - James Joyce [253]
The proto was traipsing through the tangle then, Mathew Walker, godsons’ goddestfar, deputising for gossipocracy, and his station was a few perch to the weatherside of the knoll Asnoch and it was from no other place unless there, how and ever, that he proxtended aloof upon the ether Mesmer’s Manuum, the hand making silence. The buckos beyond on the lea, then stopped wheresoever they found their standings and that way they set ward about him, doing obedience, nod, bend, bow and curtsey, like the watchers of Prospect, upholding their broad-awake prober’s hats on their firrum heads, the travelling court on its findings circuiting that personer in his fallen. And a crack quatyouare of stenoggers they made of themselves, solons and psy— chomorers, all told, with their hurts and daimons, spites and clops, not even to the seclusion of their beast by them that was the odd trick of the pack, trump and no friend of carrots. And, what do you think, who should be laying there file:///E|/Books/Top%20100%20Novels%20list/Finnegans%20Wake/complete.html[9/12/2007 12:21:58 PM]
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
above all other persons forenenst them only Yawn ! All of asprawl he was laying too amengst the poppies and, I can tell you something more than that, drear writer, profoundly as you may bedeave to it, he was oscasleep asleep. And it was far more similar to a satrap he lay there with unctuous beauty all surrounded, the poser, or for whatall I know like Lord Lumen, coaching his preferred constellations in faith and doctrine, for old Matt Gregory, ’tis he had the starmenagerie, Marcus Lyons and Lucas Metcalfe Tarpey and the mack that never forgave the ass that lurked behind him, Jonny na Hossaleen.
More than their good share of their five senses ensorcelled you would say themselves were, fuming censor, the way they could not rightly tell their heels from their stools as they cooched down a mamalujo by his cubical crib, as question time drew nighing and the map of the souls’
groupography rose in relief within their quarterings, to play tops or kites or hoops or marbles, curchycurchy, gawking on him, for the issuance of his pnum and softnoising one of them to another one, the boguaqueesthers. And it is what they began to say to him tetrahedrally then, the masters, what way was he.
— He’s giving, the wee bairn. Yun has lived.
— Yerra, why dat, my leader?
— Wisha, is he boosed or what, alannah?
— Or his wind’s from the wrong cut, says Ned of the Hill.
— Lesten!
— Why so and speak up, do you hear me, you sir?
— Or he’s rehearsing somewan’s funeral.
— Whisht outathat! Hubba’s up!
And as they were spreading abroad on their octopuds their drifter nets, the chromous gleamy seiners’ nets and, no lie, there was word of assonance being softspoken among those quartermasters.
— Get busy, kid!
— Chirpy, come now!
— The present hospices is a good time.
— I’ll take on that chap.
file:///E|/Books/Top%20100%20Novels%20list/Finnegans%20Wake/complete.html[9/12/2007 12:21:58 PM]
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
For it was in the back of their mind’s ear, temptive lissomer, how they would be spreading in quadriliberal their azurespotted fine attractable nets, their nansen nets, from Matt Senior to the thurrible mystagogue after him and from thence to the neighbour and that way to the puisny donkeyman and his crucifer’s cauda. And in their minds years backslibris, so it was, slipping beauty, how they would be meshing that way, when he rose to it, with the planckton at play about him, the quivers of scaly silver and their clutches of chromes of the highly lucid spanishing gold whilst, as hour gave way to mazing hour, with Yawn himself keeping time with his thripthongue, to ope his blurbeous lips he would, a let out classy, the