by James Joyce
Ain’t that swell, hey? Peamengro! Talk about lowness! Any dog’s quantity of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle, for the very fourth snap the Tulloch-Turnbull girl with her coldblood kodak shotted the as yet unremuneranded national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Caer Fere, Soak Amerigas, vias the shipsteam Pridewin, after having buried a hatchet not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt, nummer desh ta tren, into Patatapapaveri’s, fruiterers and musical florists, with his Ciaho, chavi! Sar shin, shillipen?, she knew the vice out of bridewell was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.
[Johns is a different butcher’s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen’s spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. Feel his lambs! Ex! Feel how sheap! Exex! His liver too is great value, a spatiality! Exexex! COMMUNICATED.]
Around that time, moravar, one generally hoped, for luvvomony, or at any rate suspected among morticians that he would early turn out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B. and do for himself one dandy time. Nay, of a pelting night blanketed creditors, hearing a coarse song and splash off Eden Quay, sighed and rolled over, sure all was up, but, though he fell heavily and locally into debit, not even then could such an antinomian be true to type. He would not put fire to his cerebrum; he would not throw himself in Liffey; he would not explaud himself with pneumantics; he refused to saffrocake himself with a sod. With the foreign devil’s leave the fraidborn fraud diddled even death. Anzi, cabled (but shaking the worth out of his maulth: Guardacosta leporello? Szasas Kraicz!) from his Nearapoblican asylum to his jonathan for a brother: Here tokay, gone tomorry, we’re spluched, do something, Fireless. And had answer: Inconvenient, David.
You see, chaps, it will trickle out, freaksily of course, but the tom and the shorty of it is: he was in his bardic memory low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each and every crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbour’s word, and if ever, during a Munda conver-sazione commoted in the nation’s interest, delicate tippits were thrown out to him touching his evil courses by some wellwishers vainly pleading by scriptural arguments with the opprobrious papist about what about trying to brace up for the kidos of the thing, Scally wag, and be a men insteed of a dem scrounger, dish it all, such as: Pray, what is the meaning, sousy, of that continental expression, if you ever came acrux it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille? or: Did you anywhere, kennel, on your gullible’s travels or during your rural troubadouring happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman whimpering to the name of Low Swine who always addresses women out of the one corner of his mouth, lives on loans and is furtivefree yours of age? without one sign of haste, like the supreme prig he was, and not a bit sorry, he would pull a vacant landlubber’s face, root with earwaker’s pensile in the outer of his lauscher and then, lisping, the prattlepate parnella, to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under the canopies of Jansens Chrest would any decent son of an Albiogenselman who had bin to an university think, let a lent hit a hint and begin to tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that tamileasy samtalaisy conclamazzione (since, still and before panesthetic physicians, lawyers merchant, belfry pollititians, agricolous manufraudurers, sacrestanes of the Pure River Society, philanthropicks lodging on as many boards round the peninsulounge at the same time as possible) the whole lifelong swrine story of his entire low cornaille existence, abusing his deceased ancestors wherever the sods were and one moment tarabooming great blunderguns (poh!) about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum, whom history, climate and entertainment made the first of his sept and always up to debt, though Eavens ears ow many fines he faces, and another moment visanvierssas cruaching three jeers (pah!) for his rotten little ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, a blighty, a reeky, a lighty, a scrapy, a babbly, a ninny, dirty seventh among thieves and always bottom sawyer, till nowan knowed how howmely howme could be, giving unsolicited testimony on behalf of the absent, as glib as eaveswater, to those present (who meanwhile, with increasing lack of interest in his semantics, allowed various subconscious smickers to drivel slowly across their fichers), unconsciously explaining, for inkstands, with a meticulosity bordering on the insane, the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and cuttlefishing every lie unshrinkable about all the other people in the story, leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple worf and plague and poison they had cornered him about until there was not a snoozer among them but was utterly undeceived in the heel of the reel by the recital of the rigmarole.
He went without saying that the cull disliked anything anyway approaching a plain straightforward standup or knockdown row and, as often as he was called in to umpire any octagonal argument among slangwhangers, the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last speaker and clasp shakers (the handtouch which is speech without words) and agree to every word as soon as half uttered: command me! your servant, good, I revere you, how, my seer? be drinking that! quite truth, gratias, I’m yoush, see wha’m hearing? also goods, please it, me sure? be filling this! quiso, you said it, apasafello, muchas grassyass, is there firing-on-me? is their girlic-on-you? to your good self, your sulphur: and then at once focuss his whole unbalanced attention upon the next octagonist who managed to catch a listener’s eye, asking and imploring him out of his piteous onewinker (hemoptysia diadumenos) whether there was anything in the world he could do to please him and to overflow his tumbletantaliser for him yet once more.
One hailcannon night (for his departure was attended by a heavy down-pour) as very recently as some thousand rains ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled parsonal violence, being soggert all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the-Leafy from Mr Vanhomrigh’s house at 81 bis Mabbot’s Mall as far as Green Patch beyond the brickfields of Salmon Pool by rival teams of slowspiers counter quick-limers who finally, as rahilly they had been deteened out rawther laetich, thought, busnis hits busnis, they had better be streaking for home after their Auborne-to-Auborne, with thanks for the pleasant evening, one and all disgustedly, instead of ruggering him back and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions about all the truffes they had brought on him) to a friendship, fast and furious, which merely arose out of the noxious pervert’s perfect lowness. Again there was a hope that people, looking on him with the contempt of the contemptibles, after first giving him a roll in the dirt might pity and forgive him, if properly deloused, but the pleb was born a Quicklow and sank alowing till he stank out of sight.
All Saints beat Belial! Mickil Goals to Nichil! Notpossible! Already?
In Nowhere has yet the Whole World taken part of himself for his Wife;
By Nowhom have Poorparents been sentenced to Worms, Blood and Thunder for Life;
Not yet has the Emp up from Corpsica forced the Arth out of Engleterre;
Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder on the Mound of a Word made Warre;
Not yet Witchywitchy of Wench has struck Fire of his Heath from on Hoath;
Not yet his Arcobaleine has forespoken Peacepeace upon Oath;
Cleftfoot from Hempal must tumpel, Blamefool Gardener’s bound to fall;
Broken Eggs will poursuive bitten Apples for where theirs is Will there’s his Wall;
But the Mountstill frowns on the Millstream while their Madsons leap o’er his Bier
And her Rillstrill liffs to His Murkesty all her daft Daughters laff in her Ear.
Till the four Shores of deff Tory Island let the douze dumm Eirewhiggs raille!
Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings! chirps the Ballat of Perce Oreille.
O fortunous casualitas! Lefty takes the cherubcake while Righto cloves his hoof. Darkies never done tug that coon out to play non-excretory, antisexuous, misoxenetic, gaasy pure, flesh and blood games, written and comp
osed and sung and danced by Niscemus Nemon, same as piccaninnies play all day, those old (none of your honeys and rubbers!) games for fun and element we used to play with Dina and old Joe kicking her behind and before and the yallow girl kicking him behind old Joe, games like Thom Thom the thonderman, Put the wind up the peeler, Hat in the ring, Prisson your pritchards and play withers team, Mikel on the luckypig, Nickel in the slot, Sheila Harnett and her cow, Adam and Ell, Humble bumble, Moggies on the wall, Twos and threes, American jump, Fox come out of your den, Broken bottles, Writing a letter to Punch, Tiptop is a sweetstore, Henressy Crump expolled, Postman’s knock, Are we fairlys represented?, Solomon silent reading, Appletree pearstone, I know a washerwoman, Hospitals, As I was walking, There is oneyone’s house in Dreamcolohour, Battle of Waterloo, Colours, Eggs in the bush, Habberdasherisher, Telling your dreams, What’s the time, Nap, Ducking mammy, Last man standing, Heali Baboon and the forky theagues, Fickleyes and futilears, Hand-married but once in my life and I’ll never commit such a sin agin, Zip cooney candy, Turkey in the straw, This is the way we sow the seed of a long and lusty morning, Hops of fun at Miliken’s make, I seen the toothbrush with Pat Farrell, Here’s the fat to graze the priest’s boots, When his steam was like a raimbrandt round MacGarvey.
Now it is notoriously known how on that surprisingly bludgeony Unity Sunday, when the grand germogall allstar bout was harrily the rage between our weltingtoms extraordinary and our pettythicks the marshalaisy and Irish eyes of welcome were smiling daggers down their backs, when the roth vice and blause met the noyr blank and rogues and the grim white and cold bet the black fighting tans, categorically unimperatived by the maxims, rank funk getting the better of him the scut in a bad fit of pyjamas fled like a leveret for his bare lives to Talviland, ahone ahaza, pursued by the scented curses of all the village belles and, without having struck one blow (pig stole on him was lust he lagging it was becaused dust he shook), kushykorked himself up tight in his inkbattle house, badly the worse for boosegas, there to stay in afar for the life, where, as there was not a moment to be lost, after he had boxed a round with his fortepiano till he was whole bamp him bach and bump him blues, he collapsed carefully under a bedtick from Schwitzer’s, his face enveloped into a dead warrior’s telemac, with a lullobaw’s somnbomnet and a whotwaterwottle at his feet, to stoke his energy of waiting, moaning feebly in monkmarian monotheme, but tarnal long and then a nation louder, while engaged in swallowing from a large ampullar, that his pawdry’s purgatory was more than a nigger bloke could bear, hemiparalysed by the tong warfare and all the shemozzle (Daily Maily, fullup lace! Holy Maly, mothelup Joss!), his cheeks and trousers changing colour every time a gat croaked.
How is that for low, laities and gentlenuns? Why, dog of the Crostiguns, whole continents rang with this Kairokoiran lowness! Sheols of houris in chems upon divans (revolted stellas vespertine among them) at a bare (O!) mention of the scaly rybald exclaimed: Poisse!
But would anyone, short of a madhouse, believe it? Neither of those clean little cherubum, Nero or Nobookishonester himself, ever nursed such a spoiled opinion of his monstrous marvellosity as did this mental and moral defective (here perhaps at the vanessance of his lownest) who was known to grognt rather than gunnard upon one occasion, while drinking heavily of spirits, to that interlocutor a latere and private privysuckatary he used to pal around with in the kavehazs, one Davy Browne-Nowlan, his heavenlaid twin (this hambone dogpoet pseudoed himself under the hangname he gave himself of Bethgelert), in the porchway of a gipsy’s bar (Shem always blaspheming, so holy writ, Billy, he would try, old Belly, and pay this one manjack congregant of his four soups every lass of nexmouth, Bolly, so sure as thair’s a tail on a commat, as a taste for a storik’s fortytooth, that is to stay, to listen out, ony twenny minnies moe, Bully, his Ballade Imaginaire, which was to be dubbed Wine, Woman and Waterclocks or How a Guy Finks and Fawkes When He Is Going Batty by Maistre Sheames de la Plume, some most dreadful stuff in a murderous mirrorhand) that he was awoopf (parn me!) aware of no other shaggyspick, other Shakhisbeard, either prexactly unlike his polar andthisishis or procisely the seems as woops (parn!) as what he fancied or guessed the sames as he was himself and that, greet scoot, duckings and thuggery, though he was foxed fux to fux like a bunnyboy rodger with all the teashop lionses of Lumdrum hivanhoesed up gagainst him, being a lapsis linquo with a ruvidubb shortartempa, bad cad dad fad sad mad nad vanhaty fear, the consciquenchers of casuality prepestered crusswords in postposition, scruff, scruffer, scruffrumurraimost andallthatsortofthing, if reams stood to reason and his lankalivline lasted he would wipe alley english spooker, multaphoniaksically spuking, off the face of the erse.
After the thorough fright he got that bloody Swithun’s day, though every doorpost in muchtried Lucalizod was smeared with generous erstborn gore and every free for all cobbleway slippery with the bloods of heroes crying to Welkins for others and noahs and culverts agush with tears of joy, our low waster never had the common baalamb’s pluck to stir out and about the compound while everyone else of the torchlit throng, slashers and sliced alike, mobbu on massa, waaded and baaded around, yampyam pampyam, chanting the Gillooly chorus from the Monster Book of Paltryattic Puetrie, O pura e pia bella!, in junk et sampam or in secular sinkalarum, heads up, on their bonafide avocations (the little folk creeping on all fours to their natural school treat but childishly gleeful when a stray whizzer sang out intermediately) and happy belongers to the fairer sex on their usual quest for higher things, but vying with Lady Smythe to avenge MacJobber, went stonestepping with their bickerstaffs on educated feet, plinkity plonk, across the sevenspan ponte dei colori set up over the slop after the war-to-end war by Messrs a charitable government, for the only once (Dia dose Finnados!) he did take a tompip peepestrella through a threedraw eighteen-hawkspower durdicky telescoop, luminous to larbourd only like the lamps in Nassaustrass, out of his westernmost keyhole, spitting at the impenetrablum wetter (and it was porcoghastly that outumn), with an eachway hope in his shivering soul, as he prayed to the cloud Incertitude, of finding out for himself, on akkount of all the kules in Kroukaparka or oving to all the kodseoggs in Kalatavala, whether true conciliation was forging ahead or falling back after the celestious intemperance and, for Duvvelsache, why, with his see me see and his my see a corves and his fiskerfoskerfusker layen loves in meeingseeing, he got the charm of his optical life when he found himself (hic sunt lennones!) at pointblank range blinking down the barrel of an irregular revolver of the bulldog with a purpose pattern handled by an unknown quarreler who, supposedly, had been told off to shade and shoot shy Shem should the shit show his shiny shnout out awhile to look facts in their face before being holed and creased (uprip and jack him!) by six or a dozen of the gayboys.
What, para Saom Plaom, in the names of Deucalion and Pyrrha and the incensed privy and the licensed pantry gods and Stator and Victor and Kutt and Runn and the whole mesa redonda of Lorencao Otulass in convocacaon, was this disinterestingly low human type, this Calumnious Column of Cloaxity, this Bengalese Beacon of Biloxity, this Annamite Aper of Atroxity, really at, it will be precise to quarify, for he seems in a badbad case?
The answer, to do all the diddies in one dedal, would sound: from pulling himself on his most flavoured canal the huge chesthouse of his elders (the Popapreta, and some navico, navvies!) he had flickered up and flinnered down into a drug and drunkery addict growing megalomane of a loose past. This explains the litany of septuncial lettertrumpets, honorific, highpitched, erudite, neoclassical, which he so loved as patricianly to manuscribe after his name. It would have diverted, if ever seen, the shuddersome spectacle of this semidemented zany amid the inspissated grime of his glaucous den making believe to read his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles, édition de ténèbres (even yet, sighs the Most Different Dr Pointdejeuk, authorised bowdler and censor, it can’t be repeated!), turning over three sheets at a wind, telling himself delightedly, no espellor mor so, that every splurge on the vellum he blundered over was an aisling
vision more gorgeous than the one before, t.i.t.s., a roseschelle cottage by the sea for nothing for ever, a ladies’ tryon hosiery raffe at liberty, a sewerful of guineagold wine with brancomonge padeiropie and sickcylinder oysters worth a billion a bite, an entire operahouse (there was to be stamping room only in the prompter’s loudbox and everthemore his queue kept swelling) of enthusiastic noblewomen flinging every coronetcrimsoned stitch they had off at his probscenium, one after the others, inamagoaded into ajustilloosing themselves, in their gaiety pantheomime, when, egad, sir, acordant to all acountstrick, he squealed the topsquall im Deal Lil Shemlockup Yellin (geewhiz, jew ear that far! soap ewer! loutgout of sabaous! juice like a boyd!) for fully five minutes, infinitely better than Baraton McGluckin, with a scrumptious cocked hat and three green, cheese and tangerine trimmity plumes on the righthandled side of his amarellous head, a coat macfarlane (the kerssest cut, you understand?), a sponiard’s digger at his ribs (Alfaiate punxit), an azulblu blowsheet for his blousebosom blossom and a dean’s crozier that he won from Cardinal Lindundarri and Cardinal Carchingarri and Cardinal Loriotuli and Cardinal Occidentaccia (ah ho!) in the dearby darby doubled for falling first over the hurdles, madam, in the odder hand, a.a.t.s.o.t. But what with the murky light, the botchy print, the tattered cover, the jigjagged page, the fumbling fingers, the foxtrotting fleas, the lieabed lice, the scum on his tongue, the drop in his eye, the lump in his throat, the drink in his pottle, the itch in his palm, the wail of his wind, the grief from his nose, the dig in his ribs, the age of his arteries, the weight of his breath, the fog of his mindfag, the buzz in his braintree, the tic of his conscience, the height up his rage, the gush down his fundament, the fire in his gorge, the tickle of his tail, the bane in his bullugs, the squince in his suil, the rot in his eater, the ycho in his earer, the totters of his toes, the tetters on his tumtytum, the rats in his garret, the bats in his belfry, the budgerigars and bumbosolom beaubirds, the hullabaloo and the dust in his ears, since it took him a month to steal a march he was hardset to mumorise more than a word a week.
