(A sinister figure with crossed legs leans against O’Beirne’s wall.
The 63rd Cast. Page 356, line 216.
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne’s wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
BLOOM: Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta?
THE FIGURE: (Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Password. Sraid Mabbot.
BLOOM: Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters.) Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.
Episode 15. Mr. Bloom is following Stephen and Lynch, having left Amiens Street Station (now Connolly Station) and headed for the brothel district. He turns north from Talbot Street into Mabbot Street (now Corporation Street), and has come as far as O’Beirne’s pub. The star on the map below marks the spot.
Who is this figure in the sombrero?
A little later in the same episode, he appears again as the man of dark mercury. Mercury, of course, was once used as a treatment for syphilis.
(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.)
THE DARK MERCURY: The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.
MARTHA: (Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish Times in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing.) Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.
（U372.748-）
Later still in the same episode, the sombrero man appears again. This time, he is Henry Flower. Bloom is carrying on a secret correspondence with a woman named Martha (who also appears in the passage above), and Henry Flower is the pseudonym he uses in those letters.
So the sombrero man is a kind of alter ego of Bloom himself.
But why is Henry Flower dressed in a sombrero?
(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob’s pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour’s face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of his amorous tongue.)
HENRY: (In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.) There is a flower that bloometh.
（U421.2478）
Bloom addresses the sombrero man in Spanish. One wonders whether Bloom actually knows any Spanish, but in fact he has already used a similar phrase in Episode 13.
Buenas noches, señorita. El hombre ama la muchacha hermosa. Why me? Because you were so foreign from the others.
（U311.1208）
Henry responds by raising one arm in signal. I wonder whether this is meant to suggest the Red Hand of Ulster—the symbol of Ulster in the north of Ireland, derived from myth.
Since this is still before the Northern Ireland question in its later form, it would presumably carry the meaning of a Gaelic Irish nationalist symbol.
Henry then says in Irish, “Sraid Mabbot”—that is, “Mabbot Street.”
Irish (Gaelic) was the older language historically spoken in Ireland.
It is not entirely clear whether Bloom understands this, but he answers with “Slan leath,” meaning “goodbye” or “farewell” in Irish.
In Episode 12, the nationalist Citizen says “Slan leat” as a kind of toast in the pub (U258.819). The spelling is slightly different, but it appears to mean the same thing.
So Terry brought the three pints.
—Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.
—Slan leat, says he.
—Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.
The Gaelic League appeared earlier in this blog, in Cast no. 33.
Bloom seems to suspect that this man is one of the Citizen’s crowd—the same crowd from the pub, and perhaps sent by that quarrelsome nationalist whom he had clashed with earlier.
For the method used in this blog, ☞ click Here.
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