77 (U93.937) Twentyseventh I’ll be at his grave.

 Cast 77. Page 93, line 937.

Twentyseventh I’ll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Near death’s door. Who passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting if they told you what they were. So and So, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a woman’s with her saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew.

This is from Episode 6. Bloom has come to Glasnevin Cemetery for the funeral of his friend Dignam, and in the graveyard he falls into one of his characteristic trains of thought about death.

As mentioned in Cast 5, Bloom lost his father to suicide. Since his father died in Ennis, County Clare, on 27 June 1886, Bloom is thinking that he will go to visit his grave on the twenty-seventh of this month.

What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom?

The Queen’s Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated, …　

（U574.1070）

“Kick the bucket” is, of course, an idiom meaning “to die,” but there are said to be several possible origins for it.

• From the image of a person committing suicide by hanging, kicking away the upturned bucket used as a step.
• From an older sense of “bucket” meaning a beam used in slaughtering livestock, where animals such as pigs were hung upside down and kicked at it as they were killed.
• From a Catholic custom in which a bucket of holy water was placed at the feet of the dead, so that mourners could sprinkle the body.

This phrase appears twice more in the novel. In Ulysses, the bucket of death crosses paths with the plasterer’s bucket.

Bloom’s own fantasy about the dead and the living:

Since I fed the birds five minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa

（U134.481）

And Mulligan mocking the death of Stephen’s mother:

BUCK MULLIGAN: (Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes on to the scone.) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.

（U473.4179）

The “lino” in “cork lino” means linoleum. It was a building material used chiefly for flooring, made from linseed oil mixed with limestone, wood flour, resin, cork dust, natural pigments, and the like. Cork lino would be linoleum containing cork dust. Perhaps it was a fashionable flooring material at the time.

Linoleum appears in several places elsewhere in the novel as well.

Gerty MacDowell, the central figure of Episode 13, is carrying letters and samples relating to Catesby’s cork lino for her father, who is laid up sick in bed, from his office in town.

On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M’Coy, taking leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger Greene’s office and Dollard’s big red printinghouse Gerty MacDowell, carrying the Catesby’s cork lino letters for her father who was laid up, knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant…　

（U208.1207）

And her mother said to him to let that be a warning to him for the rest of his days and he couldn’t even go to the funeral on account of the gout and she had to go into town to bring him the letters and samples from his office about Catesby’s cork lino, artistic, standard designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and always bright and cheery in the home.

　（U291.323）

So was Gerty’s father in the linoleum trade? He could not attend Dignam’s funeral because of illness. If so, Bloom may know him. Perhaps Bloom suddenly thinks of a travelling cork-lino salesman here in the cemetery because he is remembering Gerty’s father.

Catesby was a manufacturer of linoleum. A grand building for the company was erected in London in 1904. It seems still to exist today as a household-goods company.

Bloom imagines that it would be more interesting if gravestones told you the dead person’s occupation. I remember once seeing, on television or somewhere, that such graves do exist. In the village of Săpânța in Romania, people make graves designed around their occupation and way of life while they are still alive.

The Merry Cemetery in Săpânța

File:The Good Cook-Happy Cemetery - panoramio.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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