87 (U373.773) SECOND WATCH: (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.)

Cast 87. Page 373, line 773.

　SECOND WATCH: (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

　BLOOM: Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare’s nest. I am a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain’s fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for the heroic defence of Rorke’s Drift.

Episode 15. Just after midnight. Bloom has followed the drunken Stephen and Lynch into the red-light district. They are around the point where Mabbot Street meets Mecklenburg Street, a little after the passage discussed in Cast 25.

Bloom is suspected of feeding ham and mutton to a dog, and is questioned by two members of the watch. Episode 15 shifts constantly between reality and hallucination, and at this point turns into a courtroom scene in which various charges are brought against him.

What exactly is the “watch”? The novel also contains “constables” (as mentioned in Cast 57), but the watch and the constables are clearly not the same thing.

Based on material from  Police History.com , the outline seems to be roughly this.

• Before the eighteenth century, Dublin’s policing system was extremely weak.
• There was no effective police presence by day, and at night patrols were carried out by the inefficient watch.
• The watch was appointed by each parish and supervised by constables nominated by the churchwardens and parishioners.
• Under an act passed in 1715, Dublin Corporation (the old name of the city government, not a company) was given the power to appoint the watch. The constables stood above them in the chain of command.
• In 1777, the inhabitants of each parish were empowered to elect between six and twelve men to form a wardmote court, and that court in turn selected the constables and the watch.
• After that the police system was gradually reorganised.
• Under legislation passed in 1836, Dublin policing was reformed along lines similar to the reorganisation of the Metropolitan Police carried out by Sir Robert Peel in London in 1829. The new force was placed under the authority of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. This seems to be the Dublin Metropolitan Police mentioned in Cast 33. Constables and the watch were absorbed into this newer police structure.

      A Limerick City Night Watch inspector, c. 1910.

The repeated “I am” in Bloom’s speech conveys his agitation and fluster.

“Mare’s nest” means something that does not exist, and so it came to mean a supposed discovery that turns out to be nothing, a false alarm, a fabrication, a misunderstanding, a rumour.

Molly’s father Tweedy is referred to elsewhere in the novel as “Major Brian Cooper Tweedy,” so he is probably not a major general at all, but a major.

The Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom in southern Africa. The Battle of Rorke’s Drift was one of the engagements in that war. Around 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors attacked the British garrison entrenched at the former mission station at Rorke’s Drift, but despite being heavily outnumbered, the defenders held out for two days, and when British reinforcements arrived the Zulu forces withdrew.

The Defence of Rorke’s Drift by Alphonse de Neuville

File:Défense de Rorke's Drift.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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