Guiltless he was clearly for so once at least he clearly and with still a trace of his erstwhile burr declared himself to be and we know that it is true. They tell the story that one happy-go-gusty April morning ^|1(the anniversary, as it so happened, of his first donning of long trousers)^1| long after the alleged misdemeanour when ^|1the ^|atried^a| friend of nature^1| billowing across the wide expanse of our great park in his rubberised inverness he met a cad with a pipe. The latter hardily accosted him ^|1with how do you do (a common phrase in Dublin at the time)^1| to ask could he say how much o'clock it was that the clock struck had he any idea. Earwicker, realising on fundamental principles the supreme importance of physical life and ^|1being^1| unwishful ^|1as he was^1| of being sent into eternity when plugged by ^|1the sap's bullet a softnosed bullet from the sap^1|, halted and, quick on the draw, produced from his gunpocket his shrapnel Waterbury b ^|1and land^1|, at the same instant hearing old Fox Goodman above the skirling of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman working the tenor bell in the speckled church, told the cad it was twelve punctual, adding however, as he bent ^|1down^1| to give weight to the utterance that the accusation against him had been made, as was well known in high quarters, by a creature in human form who was several degrees lower than a snake. In greater support of his words ^|1(they have been reconstructed from successive accounts in the redaction known as the Sayings of H.C. Earwicker)^1| the flaxen giant tapped his chronometer and, now standing erect with one Berlin gauntlet pointed towards the duke's
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overgrown milestone ^|1solemnly after a Macready pause^1| averred ^|1with solemn emotion^1|: Credit me, my friend. I have won straight. Hence my nationwide business and I am ^|1prepared willing^1| to take my stand upon the monument ^|1that sign of our redemption^1| any hygienic day at this hour and to declare upon the open bible before the Great Taskmaster's eye and in the presence of the deity ^|1Itself^1| and my immediate neighbours and every living soul in every corner ^|1wheresoever^1| of the globe in general acquainted with the British tongue ^|1and commutative justice^1| that there is not one tittle of truth in that purest of fabrications. The cad, ^|1perceiving diagnosing^1| that he had to do with a plainly postpuberal hyperpituitary type, ^|1like a sensible man^1| thanked for the time of day, not a little taken aback all the same that that was all the time it was, and repeated ^|1verbatim^1| as many of the words as he could call to mind that same evening ^|1at his fireside at suppertide^1| where he ^|1carefully^1| spat ^|1about his hearth^1| in museful thought after having eaten very excellent peas boiled with malt vinegar, a ^|1plateful proviant^1| he frankly relished in raw weather. The cad's wife (as the aftertale has it) spoke of the matter the next night but one after sodality meeting to the reverend, the director, a freshcomplexioned clergyman ^|1whom she had been meaning to speak to trusting it wd go no further than his cloth^{1| |1}and yet^1| it was he in all human probability who, when seized of the facts, was overheard by accident — if indeed, it was an accident — repeating a slightly different version of the words to a layteacher of ^|1organic chemistry rural science & school gardening^{1| |1}of a nearstout figure^1|
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in the middle forties ^|1missing^1| during a priestly flutter for safe and sane bets at the racecourse of Baldoyle on a date easily capable of remembrance by all good ^|1& true^1| turfites when the ^|1Portmarnock Encourage Selling^1| Plate was captured by two lengths from Bold Boy Cromwell after a clever getaway by Captain Blount's fresh colt Drummer Coxon at short odds. It was two coves of the name of Treacle Tom ^|1as was just out of pawn ^|afollowing the theft of a leg of pork^a|1| and his own blood and milk brother ^|1professionally known as^1| Frisky Shorty come off the hulks ^|1both of them awful poor^1| what was on the bum around for an oofbird game for a jimmyogoblin or a small thick as heard the reverend parson ^|1in the motor togs^1| make use of the language which he was having a gurgle off his own along of the ^|1butty^1| bloke in the specs. This Treacle Tom, to whom reference has just been made, had been absent from his usual wild and woolly haunts for some time previous to that (he was, in fact, in the habit of frequenting common lodginghouses where he slept in a nude state in strange men's bunks) but ^|1revisiting on racenight his house of call on racenight revisiting his house of call ^|ablotto after copious tots of rum^a|1| he sought his wellwarmed bed at Block W, Pump square, The Liberties, he repeated the ^|1whole^1| tale in parts more than once during uneasy slumber in the joint hearing of Peter a discharged ^|1drapery cash draper's^1| executive Peter Cloran, O'Donnell, a secretary of no fixed abode ^|1locally known as Cruck^1| who had passed several nights in a doorway and Hosty, an illstarred ^|1beach^1| busker who, feeling suicidal,
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had been tossing on his shakedown devising ways and means of somehow getting a hold of some chap's parabellum in the hope of lighting upon a dive somewhere off the main tramline where he could go and blow the napper off himself in peace and quietness, he having been trying all he knew for over eighteen months to get into Jervis Street hospital without having been able to wangle it ^|1anyway anysides^1|. O'Donnell and Peter Cloran, as an understood thing, slept in the one bed with Hosty and the ^|1housewife nevertired tweeny^1| dawn-of-all-work had not been very many hours furbishing potlids, doorbar doorbrasses, scholars' applecheeks and ^|1livery linkboys'^1| metals when the rejuvenated busker and his bedroom suite were up and afoot crosstown to the thrumming of a crewth fiddle and, after a visit to a publichouse not a thousand leagues from the site of Parnell's statue where, the tale runs on, the trio were joined by a further casual and a decent sort who had just pocketed the weekly insult and all had stimulants in the shape of five gee and gees stood by the decent sort after which all came out of the licensed premises wiping their mouth on their sleeve and, the world was the richer for a new halfpenny ballad ^|1which. This^1| was first sung under the shadow of the monument of the dead legislator to an overflow meeting fully filling the visional
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area and easily representative of all sections and cross sections of the Irish people ranging from slips of ^|1boys young Dublins^1| with pocketed hands and corporation bucket emergency men in search of an honest crust to busy professional gentlemen, ^|1a brace of palesmen in dundrearies exchanging cold sneers,^1| massgoing ladies in their chairs and a few old souls obviously under the spell of liquor. Word soon went round and the ballad printed on a slip of blue paper headed by a rough woodcut soon fluttered on highway and byway to the rose of the winds from lane to lattice and from mouth to ear throughout the five corners of the ^|1land United States^1| of Ireland. And around the land this rann it ran and this is the ran that Hosty made: