80 (483.4498) (Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt

 Cast 80. Page 483, line 4498.

　(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o’-day boy’s hat signs to Stephen.)

　KEVIN EGAN: H’lo! Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.

　(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince leaf.)

　PATRICE: Socialiste!

　DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates.) Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!

This is from Episode 15. Stephen, having just left Bella Cohen’s brothel, is being harassed by two British soldiers. It comes immediately after the section discussed in blog post 39. This blog reads Ulysses at random based on generated numbers, but for some reason this stretch keeps coming up.

Since Episode 15 is made up of hallucinations and fantasies, people who are not physically present appear on the scene. It is only a short passage, but a difficult one to make sense of.

Kevin Egan is summoned here from Stephen’s recollections in Episode 3, where he remembers meeting him during his student days in Paris.

His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.

（U36.232）

The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw facebones under his peep of day boy’s hat.

（U36.241）

Kevin Egan is modeled on Joseph Casey (Joseph Theobald Casey, 1846–c.1907), a member of the Fenian movement, which was devoted to Irish independence and the establishment of an Irish republic. After being imprisoned in London for assaulting a policeman, Casey went to France and later served with the French army in the Franco-Prussian War. Through the fact that his brother knew Joyce’s father, he looked after Joyce when Joyce was studying in Paris in 1903.

The “Spanish tasselled shirt” makes me think of the fringed shirts worn by cowboys in Westerns. Since the cowboy tradition itself has roots in Spaniards based in Mexico, the clothing may well trace back to Spain too.

The Peep o’ Day Boys were a Protestant rural secret society in late eighteenth-century Ireland, formed in opposition to Catholics. They got their name because they attacked Catholic homes at dawn, “at peep of day.” I do not know exactly what a peep-o’-day boy’s hat would have looked like. Since Egan is presumably Catholic, it is odd that he is wearing one.

His line comes from the French antisemitic journalist Édouard Drumont, who had called Queen Victoria “the old hag with the yellow teeth.” In French, vieille ogresse means “old ogress” or “old hag,” and dents jaunes means “yellow teeth.” He is not really speaking to Stephen here, but provoking the British soldiers who have accosted him.

Patrice Egan is Kevin’s son, and his model was apparently Patrice Casey, the son of Joseph Casey. Patrice was an atheist, a socialist, and a soldier in the French army. That is why he shouts “Socialiste!”

His rabbit-like face also appears in Episode 3.

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father’s a bird, he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny’s face.

（U34.165）

I do not know why he is chewing a quince leaf. Quince leaves can be used for herbal tea, so perhaps it is meant to suggest some healthful or rustic habit.

Quince (Cydonia communis) illustration from Traité des Arbres e

by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel

The long-named figure, Don Emile Patrizio Franz Rupert Pope Hennessy, seems to be a personification of the “Wild Geese.”

After the Protestant army of William III of Orange defeated the forces of the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, Patrick Sarsfield, who had commanded on the Irish side, left for France with his troops. These men, hoping one day to return to Ireland, survived across Europe as mercenaries, craftsmen, merchants, and so on. They came to be known as the “Wild Geese.” More broadly, the term can refer to Irish soldiers of fortune active on the European continent from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.

Since the Wild Geese were active all over Europe, the name of this figure is a jumble of Spanish, Italian, German or Austrian, British, and French elements. The language he speaks is likewise a mixed-up hybrid of several European languages.

Werf is German for “throw.” Boden in footboden is German for “floor.” Porco is Italian for “pig.” Todos is Spanish for “all.” Johnyellows was an Irish derogatory term for Protestant Englishmen. The color yellow also links back to Queen Victoria. Even so, I cannot make out the whole meaning with any confidence.

This too seems to be a fantasy in which the Wild Geese, standing in opposition to Protestant Britain, challenge the British soldiers. Kevin Egan, too, is one of their descendants.

Portrait of a Gentleman, possibly Patrick Sarsfield (d.1693)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_a_Gentleman,_possibly_Patrick_Sarsfield_.PNG

For the method of this blog, see ⇒ Here