Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots.
40th cast. page 18, line 691.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
Episode 1. Stevin, Mulligan and Haines, living in Martello Tower, came to a beach near the tower called Forty Foot.
The text of the first episode looks ordinary at first glance, but is really elaborate.
So many L's in so little text.
Mulligan
unlace
elderly
blowing
scrambled
glistening
garland
rilling
spilling
black
loincloth
ALP's L in Finnegans Wake. For Joyce, L is associated with the flow of water.
Head rhymes are consciously used.
shot ― spur
rock ― red
scrambled ― stones
garland ― grey
spilling ― sagging
Forty Foot is a cape at the southern end of Dublin Bay and a historic bathing beach. There are many versions of the origins of the name. Some say that the water is 40 feet deep, some say that the road was 40 feet wide, and some say that it was the garrison of the 40th Infantry Regiment.
Who is swimming?
There is this passage at the end of Episode1.
"The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly."
（U19.739）
This man was a Catholic priest. His head was shaved.
The bathing in Episode 1 corresponds with Mr. Bloom's bathing at the end of Episode 5.
"He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower."
（U69.567）
"Among Giants" by Gavin Kealy is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
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