28 (U327.593)

So be off now, says he, 

28th cast. page 327, line 593.

 

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.

Stephen, Mr. Bloom, and the medical students are chatting in the lounge of the National Maternity Hospital.

Episode 14  traces the stylistic history of English prose from the past to the present with stylistic sketches. This section is attributed to the style of Jonathan Swift's  The Tale of a Tub (1704). A text of allegory and satire.

In correspondence with the motifs in The Odyssey, the maternity hospital is on the island of Trinacie, the island of the sun god. Odysseus' men eat the sun god's domestic cattle, despite being forbidden to do so.

 

Therefore, the bull appears as a major motif in Episode 14.

 

The word "bull" means (1) an adult male of domestic cattle, (2) an encyclical of the Pope, and (3) a typical Englishman as John Bull. In the passage before and after this, the history of the Pope, the King of England, and Ireland is discussed in relation to cattle. This is a tough passage to decipher.

 

In the first sentence, “he” is Nicholas, a farmer, who says to the bull, "So be off now". Nicholas is Pope Hadrian IV, and the bull seems to be referring to the Catholic Church and the Pope's encyclical. Harry is King Henry II.

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. 

 

Hadrian IV (ca. 1100 - 1159) was the only Pope (reigned 1154 - 1159) from England. His real name was Nicholas Breakspear. In 1155, Hadrian IV issued a papal bull called Laudabiliter, authorizing King Henry II of England to invade Ireland.  He wanted to bring the Church of Ireland, where heresy was widespread, under the Catholic Church and cultivate the whole island.

 

Henry II (1133 - 1189), King of England, invaded Ireland in 1171 and became the first King of England to land in Ireland. He became the first Lord of Ireland and forced the Irish kings to swear an oath of obedience.

 

"Mr Vincent" is Vincent Lynch, a medical student and Stephen's friend. The second sentence is his narrative, referring to Henry II's invasion of Ireland and his indoctrination by the Catholic Church.

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.

The word "cowhouse" means a chamber of confession.

 

In the " The Tale of a Tub ", there is a passage where the word bull is used to describe a callte and an encyclical. "Peter" is the personification of Catholicism.

" But of all Peter’s rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls, whose race was by great fortune preserved in a lineal descent from those that guarded the golden-fleece.  Though some who pretended to observe them curiously doubted the breed had not been kept entirely chaste, because they had degenerated from their ancestors in some qualities, and had acquired others very extraordinary, but a foreign mixture."

Jonathan Swift, The Tale of a Tub and The History of Martin (Section Ⅳ)

John Bull triumphant

 File:John Bull triumphant. (BM 1851,0901.22).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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