70 (U139.666) O! A bone!

 Cast 70. Page 139, line 666

O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it all however.

　—Roast beef and cabbage.

　—One stew.

 

"Mmm... Irish stew" by jeffreyw is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This is from Episode 8. Bloom has gone into Burton’s restaurant on Duke Street in search of lunch. It comes just before the passage discussed in Cast 3 of this blog. He is watching the vulgar way the customers are eating. One of them has just gnawed down to the bone.

The red circle marks Burton’s at 18 Duke Street. Bloom dislikes the place and instead goes to eat at Davy Byrne’s at No. 21, marked in blue.

Cormac mac Airt was a High King of Ireland in medieval Irish legend. Depending on the source, his reign is placed anywhere from the beginning of the second century to the end of the fourth.

The poem Bloom is recalling from school is thought to be The Burial of King Cormac by the nineteenth-century Irish poet Sir Samuel Ferguson.

　　Anon to priests of Crom was brought —

　　Where, girded in their service dread,

　　They minister'd on red Moy Slaught —

　　Word of the words King Cormac said.

　　They loosed their curse against the king;

　　They cursesd him in his flesh and bones;

　　And daily in their mystic ring

　　They turn'd the maledictive stones,

　　Till, where at meat the monarch sate,

　　Amid the revel and the wine,

　　He choked upon the food he ate,

　　At Sletty, southward of the Boyne.

　　High vaunted then the priestly throng,

　　And far and wide they noised abroad

　　With trump and loud liturgic song

　　The praise of their avenging God.

According to the legend, Cormac converted from Druidism to Christianity, and the Druids, resentful of this, cursed him so that he died by choking on a salmon bone. Since the poem itself does not specify what kind of bone it was, Bloom is presumably wondering what exactly lodged in his throat.

Saint Patrick (c. 387?–461) was the missionary and bishop who spread Christianity in Ireland and became the country’s patron saint. Historically, however, the dates do not match, so he cannot literally have been the one to convert Cormac.

Bloom’s joke is that the High King of Ireland never fully accepted Christianity: playing on the image of choking on a bone, he says Cormac “couldn’t swallow it all.”

“galoptious” is an unfamiliar word, but it belongs to a whole family of odd spellings—galumptious, galuptious, galloptious, galluptious, goluptious, golopshus, and so on. It means something like “splendid” or “temptingly delicious.” It is said to derive from the Latin voluptuous.

The person ordering the stew is, of course, just another customer at Burton’s. One naturally assumes it would be Irish stew.

The whole paragraph containing this line is a vivid description of filthy eating habits, and one of the standout pleasures of reading Ulysses.

For the method behind this blog, seeHere.

69 (U576.1179) How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person

 Cast 69. Page 576, line 1179

How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?

With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with suggestion.

This is from Episode 17. The entire episode is written from beginning to end in the form of questions and answers.

Late at night, Stephen has been brought back to the Bloom household. After spending some time in the kitchen, the two men step out into the back yard. From a second-floor rear window of the house, they can see the light of the oil lamp in the bedroom where Bloom’s wife Molly is sleeping.

Invisible — visible

indirect — direct

form a pair.

There is alliteration in allusions, affirmations, affection, and admiration.

There is also an echoing rhyme in affection, admiration, description, and suggestion.

The etymology of elucidate is the Latin “to make bright,” so it forms a verbal link with splendid and lamp.

Fire and light in the darkness are a characteristic motif of this episode.

Bloom seems to have said something to Stephen about Molly, but we do not know what he said. Even from the surrounding context, I cannot quite make out the meaning of this question and answer.

After this, the two men fall silent and look at one another.

This may, perhaps, be one of the unexpectedly important mysteries of the novel.

René Magritte, Good Fortune

"Rene Magritte - Good Fortune" by irinaraquel is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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68 (U454.3564) STEPHEN: (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.)

 Cast 68. Page 454, line 3564

STEPHEN: (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) No bottles! What, eleven? A riddle!

ZOE: (Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her stocking.) Hard earned on the flat of my back.

LYNCH: (Lifting Kitty from the table.) Come!

KITTY: Wait. (She clutches the two crowns.)

FLORRY: And me?

LYNCH: Hoopla!

(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)

This is from Episode 15. In one room of Bella Cohen’s brothel are the prostitutes Zoe, Kitty, and Florry, together with Bloom, Stephen, and Stephen’s friend Lynch.

A Pianola was a brand name for the player piano. It was developed in 1895 by the American businessman and inventor Edwin Scott Votey (1856–1931) and marketed in 1898 by the Aeolian Company. It operated by means of air pressure from pedals and a perforated music roll.

Since the novel’s present is 1904, it would have been quite a new piece of technology at the time.

When the prostitutes tell Stephen that it is already past eleven, he says, “No bottles!” The significance of eleven is that, under the law, it was illegal to serve alcohol after 11 p.m.

Stephen is remembering the riddle he gave in class at school that morning.

—This is the riddle, Stephen said:

　　　　　　　　The cock crew,
　　　　　　　　The sky was blue:
　　　　　　　　The bells in heaven
　　　　　　　　Were striking eleven.
　　　　　　　　’Tis time for this poor soul
　　　　　　　　To go to heaven.

　（U22.102）

I could not determine exactly what “pettigown” means. It seems to be a blend of petticoat and gown. Since gown has many meanings, here I take it to mean a kind of nightdress.

 “gown: lingerie consisting of a loose dress designed to be worn in bed by women”

The phrase “be flat on one’s back” means to be lying down, unable to get up.

The three prostitutes demand ten shillings each. Stephen pays a total of forty shillings: one one-pound note (worth 20 shillings), one half-sovereign gold coin (worth 10 shillings), and two crown coins (together worth 10 shillings). (Bloom later manages to recover ten shillings.)

Zoe takes the half-sovereign, and Kitty grabs the two crowns.

For reference, ten shillings in 1904 would be worth about £40 today.

“Hoopla” means a ring-toss game. Lynch throws Kitty onto the sofa as if tossing a hoop.

Now then, the real point of interest in this scene is the act of lifting up.

Throughout Ulysses, the gesture of lifting a petticoat or skirt appears again and again.

First, in Episode 1, when the old milk woman brings milk to Stephen’s dwelling, Mulligan sings a teasing little song.

—For old Mary Ann
She doesn’t care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats...

（U18.384）

In Episode 3, in Stephen’s thoughts on the strand, he recalls Mulligan’s song as he watches the seaweed by the shore.

Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds.

（U41.462）

In Episode 7, in the parable Stephen tells to the editor and others after leaving the newspaper office, two old women climb Nelson’s Pillar and hitch up their skirts.

But it makes them giddy to look so they pull up their skirts...

・・・

—And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the onehandled adulterer.

（U121.1013）

In Episode 8, Bloom remembers the night of Professor Goodwin’s concert, when a gust of wind blew Molly’s skirts up.

Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin.

（U128.193）

In Episode 9, Mulligan says to Stephen that at Camden Hall, the women playing the Daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over him.

—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!

（U178.1192）

In the hallucination scene of Episode 15, Bloom’s mother Ellen searches for smelling salts, lifting her skirt and rummaging in the pouch inside her petticoat.

ELLEN BLOOM: ・・・O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?

（U358.288）

Also in Episode 15, in the brothel scene, Lynch lifts Kitty’s skirt and white petticoat with his wand.

KITTY:・・・ (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with the wand. She settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna.) O, excuse!

（U410.2059）

In Episode 15 again, Bella the madam lifts her gown slightly and strikes a pose.

(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)

（U431.2909）

Still in Episode 15, Zoe lifts her slip and shows Stephen her thigh. She takes from the top of her stocking the potato she earlier took from Bloom.

ZOE: Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.) Those that hides knows where to find.

（U453.3524）

Then comes the present scene. (U454.3564) Zoe tucks the coin into her stocking.

In Episode 15, in the hallucination where Dublin is on fire and people are fleeing, society ladies lift up their skirts.

Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves.

（U488.4697）

In Episode 15 again, in the black mass scene, the Protestant clergyman Love, who studies the Fitzgerald family, lifts Father O’Flynn’s petticoat.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (Raises high behind the celebrant’s petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body.

（U489.4705）

In Episode 18, in Molly’s drifting consciousness, she recalls that Bloom was fascinated by the skirts of girls on bicycles blowing upward.

hes mad on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels

（U614.290）

Also in Episode 18, Molly remembers Bloom begging her to lift up her petticoat.

he had made me hungry to look at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the sunray pleats

（U615308）

For Stephen, this gesture is associated with old women; for Bloom, it is tied to his erotic tastes.

"Alla-pianola" by paola.natalia58 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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67 (U403.1816) (General commotion and compassion. Women faint.

Cast 67. Page 403, line 1816

(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I. O. U’s, wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)

BLOOM: O, I so want to be a mother.

MRS THORNTON: (In nursetender’s gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll be soon over it. Tight, dear.

This is from the hallucination scene in Episode 15. Bloom transforms into a woman and gives birth.

Miss Thornton is the midwife. She attended the births of Bloom’s son Rudy and daughter Milly. (U54.417)

Taken literally, there is not much more to unpack here. But the items collected in the street donation somehow feel familiar. So let me force a few associations from elsewhere in the novel.

① Gold and silver coins and banknotes

These recall the wages Stephen receives from Mr Deasy in Episode 2: two one-pound notes, one sovereign, two crown pieces, and two shillings. And, as mentioned in Cast 29 of this blog, the gold coin even dances on Mr Deasy’s shoulder.

He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table.

—Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.

・・・

A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.

・・・

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.

—Three twelve, he said. I think you’ll find that’s right.

—Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.

② Blank cheques

These bring to mind Davy Byrne’s pub in Episode 8, where Bloom goes for lunch. As I mentioned in Cast 42, the stingy proprietor once cashed a cheque for him.

He entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.

 （U140.733）

③ Jewels

In Episode 10, Stephen peers in at the jeweller old Russell polishing a gem.

Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned it and held it at the point of his Moses’ beard. Grandfather ape gloating on a stolen hoard.

 (U198.812)

④ Treasury bonds

These are revealed in Episode 17: the £900 of Canadian 4% government stock stored in the second drawer of the Blooms’ cupboard.

certificate of possession of £ 900, Canadian 4% (inscribed) government stock (free of stamp duty): 

(U194.1065)

⑤ Maturing bills of exchange

These recall the promissory notes and dishonoured bills protruding from the beggar’s wallet of the Jewish moneylender Reuben J. Dodd, who appeared in Episode 15 and in Cast 35 of this blog.

(Reuben J Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim’s wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills.

 (U415.2147)

⑥ I. O. U.’s

“I. O. U.” means “I owe you,” i.e. a written acknowledgment of debt. In Episode 9, Stephen owes one pound to George Russell (A.E.).

I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U.

(U156.213)

⑦ Wedding rings

In Episode 15, the brothel madam Bella Cohen is described as wearing wedding rings on her left hand.

(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and keeper rings.

 (U429.2745)

⑧ Watchchains

In Episode 13, when the girl Cissy Caffrey asks Bloom the time on the strand, he grows flustered and begins to toy with his watchchain. His watch, moreover, has stopped.

So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his watchchain, looking up at the church. 

(U236.539)

⑨ Lockets

A locket is a small pendant worn around the neck, usually containing a photograph or keepsake. In Episode 14, at the maternity hospital, the medical student Alec Bannon reveals that he is Milly Bloom’s sweetheart, and that he carries her photograph in a locket.

With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein.

 (U331.754)

⑩ Necklaces

This recalls a memory in Episode 4: the amberoid necklace Bloom gave Milly when she was about four years old.

Only five she was then. No, wait: four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke.

 (U51.285)

⑪ Bracelets

In Episode 15, the dancing “hours of the night” wear bracelets that make a dull bell-like sound.

(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they curchycurchy under veils.)

THE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!

(U470.4083)

I rather suspect Joyce may well have had this kind of thing in mind when writing the passage.

Episode 15 feels, in a way, like a grand theatrical performance in which the characters from the rest of the novel all come back on stage—bringing their props and stage furniture with them.

Uniforms for the nurses at St George's Hospital, ca. 1892

File:St. George's Hospital Nurses Wellcome L0060863.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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66 (U549.226) its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides

The 66th Cast. Page 549, line 226.

its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 % of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.

Episode 17. This episode is written entirely in the form of questions and answers. It is after two in the morning. Mr. Bloom has brought Stephen back to his house, and in the kitchen he turns on the tap to make cocoa for him.

What follows is a long catechism on Bloom’s knowledge of the properties of water, running to forty-three separate points.

This passage concerns the last four of them:

① its potential energy
② its fauna and flora
③ its ubiquity
④ its toxicity

“the waning moon” means the moon as it decreases from full moon toward new moon.

The opposite is “the waxing moon.”

　　　　　　

File:Tell-Whether-the-Moon-Is-Waxing-or-Waning-Step-9-Version-3.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

But why does the moon suddenly appear here?

I was not sure what to make of it.According to Gifford’s annotation, the waning moon symbolizes decline or decay on earth.So perhaps the idea is that the moon somehow presides over the corruption or putrefaction of stagnant waters.

That may sound rather far-fetched, but as I mentioned in Cast no. 60, Episode 17 is full of astronomical imagery, so in that sense it does fit.

A little later in the episode, the text explicitly links the moon with womanhood:

her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning:　

（U576.1162）

Another odd intrusion here is “flowerwater.”

What exactly is that doing in the middle of this quasi-scientific catalogue?

It refers to a perfumed water distilled from flower petals.

In Episode 4, Bloom notices on Molly a smell like old flower-water:

Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater.

—Would you like the window open a little?　

（U52.316）

And then in Episode 5, Bloom goes into the chemist’s to order flower-water for Molly.

It turns out to be orangeflower water.

But he does not collect it that day.

—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then orangeflower water...It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.

—And white wax also, he said.　

（U69.491）

Then again in Episode 15, in the hallucination sequence, Bloom excuses himself to Molly by saying that he was just going back to fetch it the next day:

BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (He pats divers pockets.) This moving kidney. Ah!　

（U360.332）

So all through the day, the thought of stale orangeflower water has been lingering somewhere in the back of Bloom’s mind.

　　　　　

The blossom of the bitter orange, from which orangeflower water is made

File:Citrus aurantium - Köhler–s Medizinal-Pflanzen-042.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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65 (U618.478) what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith

The 65th Cast. Page 618, line 478.

what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith shes much older than me I saw her when I was out last week her beautys on the wane she was a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down to her waist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in Grantham street 1st thing I did every morning to look across see her combing it as if she loved it and was full of it

Episode 18. The final episode consists of Molly Bloom’s interior monologue. It runs to thirty-six pages, made up of eight enormous unpunctuated sentences, with neither periods nor commas.

Here Molly is thinking about her own age and fading looks.

As for Mrs Galbraith, she appears only fleetingly in Episode 15, in the phantasmagoric sequence where a great many figures from the novel crowd briefly into view as Bloom flees the brothel. But who exactly she is remains unclear. (U479.4358)

Kitty O’Shea, however, immediately calls to mind Katharine O’Shea (1846–1921), the mistress of the famous Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell.

Parnell, leader of the Irish Home Rule movement, was carrying on an affair with Katharine O’Shea, the wife of his fellow MP Willy O’Shea. When the scandal became public, it ruined Parnell politically and dealt a severe blow to the Irish nationalist cause as well.

Katharine O’Shea, Parnell’s mistress

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KittyOShea.jpg

Katharine was still alive in 1904, the “present” of the novel, but she was in England by then, and could not literally have been living in Grantham Street in Dublin.

So this Kitty O’Shea in Molly’s memory must be someone else with the same name.

After their marriage, Molly and Bloom lived on Pleasants Street. Grantham Street runs one street to the south.

So presumably Molly is remembering a woman named O’Shea who lived there in those earlier days.

Parnell’s affair is one of the novel’s important recurring motifs.

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64 (U262.997) Hoho begob says I to myself says I.

The 64th Cast. Page 262, line 997.

　Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal’s chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers.

Episode 12. In Barney Kiernan’s pub, Mr. Bloom is in conversation with the nationalist known as Citizen, along with Joe Hynes and the other drinkers.

Someone mentions that Bloom’s wife Molly is supposed to be going away on a concert tour with the impresario Blazes Boylan, and at that moment the narrator of this episode realizes that it is in fact to be an adulterous trip.

“begob” is an Irish exclamation, apparently derived from “by God.”

According to Gifford’s annotation, “says I to myself says I” echoes a phrase from the song “When I Went to the Bar” in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Iolanthe (1882). ⇒ ♪

When I went to the Bar as a very young man,

(Said I to myself — said I),

I’ll work on a new and original plan,

(Said I to myself — said I),

I’ll never assume that a rogue or a thief

Is a gentleman worthy implicit belief,

Because his attorney has sent me a brief,

(Said I to myself — said I).

However, when I looked into it, I also found that there is an Irish song with exactly the title “Says I To Myself, Says I,” by Harry Von Tilzer and Ed Moran.

It was published in 1917, so it does not fit the novel’s date of 1904, but it is still an interesting coincidence. ⇒ 　♪

“the milk in the cocoanut” means, according to the dictionary, “the heart of the matter” or “the explanation of the mystery.”

The idea seems to be: how did the milk get into the coconut in the first place?

“absence of hair on the animal’s chest” is much less clear.

I am not sure what exactly it means. Is the narrator saying that either Bloom or Boylan has no chest hair?

Naoki Yanase argued that the narrator of this episode is actually a dog (in Solving the Mysteries of James Joyce, Iwanami Shinsho, 1996).

One of his reasons is precisely this kind of phrasing: referring to a human being as “the animal” and being oddly preoccupied with hair.

“the tootle on the flute” comes from a line in Percy French’s song “Phil the Fluter’s Ball.” ⇒ ♪

With a toot on the flute

And a twiddle on the fiddle-oh

Hopping in the middle

Like a herrin’ on the griddle-oh

Up, down, hands around

And crossing to the wall

Sure hadn’t we the gaiety

At Phil the Fluter’s ball

Island Bridge is a place-name on the western edge of Dublin.

The narrator in this episode is a remarkably inventive user of language.

　　

“Says I To Myself, Says I”

https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/saysimyselfsays00vont

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