Section 43 of 74 - Table of Contents
So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and
after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a
fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields
athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too.
Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle
this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds
all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag
and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for
aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the
land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as
said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish
swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise
poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten
of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of
shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men
making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk
skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place,
Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles
street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair
or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over
against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr
Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's
gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a
papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite) chanced against Alec.
Bannon in a cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green)
that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and
Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in
the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being
stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a
skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while
poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of
Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling
fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots
fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and
Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, be
having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red
slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken
to be for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through
pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her
term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a
bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath
very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they
say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear,
and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth
and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand
in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the
sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off
Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt
he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear.
In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much
increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall
come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that Mr
Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the
Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but
this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet
sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no
telling how.
With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter
was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for
he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on
Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near
by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went
for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh
or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes
and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns
with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps,
waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with
a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of
whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his
ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of
broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he
could always bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he had
from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their
sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry
or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his name), 'tis all about
Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go
hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it.
There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly
he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed
wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief
design of his embassy as he was sharpset. MORT AUX VACHES, says Frank
then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper
that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman
too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a
headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and
the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the
mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was
more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his
volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher,
then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he
was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk,
kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids' linen
or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat
has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father
the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What,
says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift
of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning
going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad,
says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers,
greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been some years before actuary for
Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock
and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I
question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber
tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely told him no such
matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler
thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor
Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two
of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent,
plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles
with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature,
says Mr Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an
English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull
that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder
of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr
Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a
plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had
horns galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out
of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and
rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains.
What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas
that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who
were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my
cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and
with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the
blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him
a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to
this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in
his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long
holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four
fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they dressed
him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and
ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over
with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road
with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he
could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of
the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could
scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels
brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was
full he would rear up on his hind uarters to show their ladyships a
mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language and they all
after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer
nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was
the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in
the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord
Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon,
if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of
Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful
of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half the
countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by
lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr
Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in
the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and
I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell,
says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one
evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt
to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself
but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and
on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found
sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion
bull of the Romans, BOS BOVUM, which is good bog Latin for boss of the
show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a
cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it
out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off
him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his
grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he
could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he
copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he
filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy, the
side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In
short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse
and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of
the island seeing no help was toward, as the ungrate women were all of
one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of
chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang
their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head
between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly
Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their
bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the
occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that
rollicking chanty:
--POPE PETER'S BUT A PISSABED.
A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT.
Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway
as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend
whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon,
who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a
cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a
project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched
on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards
which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend
printed in fair italics: MR MALACHI MULLIGAN. FERTILISER AND INCUBATOR.
LAMBAY ISLAND. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw
from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir
Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself
to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well,
let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it
smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as
standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon
his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a
consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the
prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal
vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the
prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities
acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch
defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable
females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their
flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly
bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might
multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of
their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he
assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he
concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with
certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had
resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island
from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much
in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a
national fertilising farm to be named OMPHALOS with an obelisk hewn and
erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman
services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever
who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the
functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take
a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent
lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm
persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his
nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of
savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter
prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled
and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies.
After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr
Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had
shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for
all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr
Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald.
His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and
won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it,
asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to
Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt
quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to
him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: TALIS AC TANTA
DEPRAVATIO HUJUS SECULI, O QUIRITES, UT MATRESFAMILIARUM NOSTRAE LASCIVAS
CUJUSLIBET SEMIVIRI LIBICI TITILLATIONES TESTIBUS PONDEROSIS ATQUE
EXCELSIS ERECTIONIBUS CENTURIONUM ROMANORUM MAGNOPERE ANTEPONUNT, while
for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal
kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest
glade, the farmyard drake and duck.
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man
of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics
while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had
advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a
passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his
nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom
were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a
civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional
assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily,
though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there
about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting
condition, poor body, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh)
to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the
table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient
ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic
gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the
noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer
Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely
below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother
Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a
trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a
conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into
the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the
same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.
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