Lowly, longly a wail went forth. Pure Yawn lay low. On the mead of the hillock he lay, brief wallet to his side, an arm loose by his staff of citron briar. Most distressfully (but, my dear, how successfully!) to wail he did, his locks of a Lucan tinge, quickrich, ripely rippling, unfilleted, those lashbetasselled lids on the verge of closing time, whiles ouze of his sidewiseopen mouth the breath of him evenso languishing as the princeliest treble treacle or lichee chewchow purse could buy. Yawn in a semiswoon lay awailing and (hooh!) what helpings of honeyful swoothead! (phew!) which earpiercing dulcitude! As were you suppose to go and push with your bluntblank pin in hand upintohis fleshasplush cushionettes of some chubby boybold love of an angel. Hwoah!

When, as the buzzer brings the light brigade, keeping the home fires burning, so on the churring call themselves came at him, three kings of three suits and a crowner, from all their cardinal parts, along the amber way where Brosna's furzy. To lift them they did, senators four, by the first quaint skreek of the gloaming, and they hopped it up the mountainy molehill, traversing climes of old times gone by, of the days not worth remembering, inventing some excusethems, any sort, having a sevenply
{f39, 475}
sweat of nightblues moist upon them — feefee! phopho!! foorchtha!!! aggala!!!! jeeshee!!!!! paloola!!!!!! ooridiminy!!!!!!! Afeard themselves were to wonder at the class of a crossroads puzzler he would likely be, length by breadth nonplussing his thickness, ells upon ells of him, making so many square yards of him, one half of him in Conn's half but the whole of him nevertheless in Owenmore's five quarters. There would he lay till they would him descry, spancelled down upon a blossomy bed at one foul stretch amongst the daffydowndillies, the flowers of narcosis fourfettering his footlights, a halohedge of wild spuds
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hovering over him, epicures waltzing with gardenfillers, puritan shoots advancing to Aran chiefs. Phopho!! The meteorpulp of him, the seamless rainbowpeel. Aggala!!!! His bellyvoid of nebulose with his neverstop navel. Paloola!!!!!! And his veins shooting melanite phosphor, his creamtocustard cometshair and his asteroid knuckles, ribs and members. Ooridiminy!!!!!!! His electrolatiginous twisted entrails belt.

Those four claymen clomb together to hold their sworn starchamber quiry on him. Up to the esker ridge it was, Mullingar parish, to a mead that was not far, the son's rest. First klettered Shanator Gregory, seeking spoor through the deep timefield; then Shanator Lyons, tailing the wavy line of his partition footsteps (something in his blisters was telling him all along how he had been in that place one time); then His Recordership, Dr Shunadure Tarpey, caperchasing after honourable sleep, hot on to the aniseed; and, up out of his prompt corner, old Shunny Mac, MacDougal the hiker, in the rere of them on the run to make a quorum. Roping their ass he was, their skygrey globetrotter, by way of an afterthought, and such legs on him they were that much oneven it was tumbling he was by four lengths, the big ass, to hear with his unaided ears the harp in the air, the bugle
{f39, 476}
dianablowing, wild as wild, the mockingbird whose word is misfortune, so 'tis said, the bulbul down the wind.

The proto was traipsing through the tangle then and his station was a few perch to the weatherside of the knoll Usnach and it was from no other place unless there that he proxtended aloof upon the ether the hand making silence. The buckos beyond on the lea then stopped wheresoever they found their standings and that way they set watch about him, upholding their broadawake probers' hats on their firrum heads. And a crack quatyouare of stenoggers they made of themselves in their aggregate age, all told, not even to the seclusion of their beast by them that was the odd trick of the pack and no friend of carrots. And, what do you think, who above all other persons should be laying there forenenst them only Yawn! All of asprawl he was laying too amengst the poppies and, I can tell you something more than that, he was profoundly asleep. And it was far more similar to a satrap he lay there with unctuous beauty, by satellites all surrounded, or for whatall I know like the Lord Lumen coaching his preferred constellations in faith and doctrine, for old Matt Gregory 'tis he had the starmenagerie: Marcus Lyons and Lucas Metcalfe Tarpey and the mack that never forgave the ass that lurked behind him, Johnny na Hossaleen.

More than their good share ensorcelled you would say themselves were the way they could not rightly tell their heels from their stools, as they cooched down a mamalujo by his cubical crib, curchycurchy, gawking on him and softnoising one of them to another one, the boguaqueesthers.
{f39, 477}
And it is what they began to say to him then, the masters, what way was he.

— He's giving, the wee bairn. Yun has lived.

— Yerra, why dat, my leader?

— Wisha, is he boosed or what, alannah?

— Or his wind's from the wrong cut, says Ned of the Hill.

— Lesten!

— Why so and speak up, do you hear me, you, sir?

— Or he's rehearsing somewan's funeral.

— Whisht outathat! Hubba's up!

And as they were spreading abroad on their octopuds their drifter nets, gleamy seiners' nets, and no lie, there was words of assonance being softspoken among those quartermasters.

— Get busy, kid!

— Chirpy, come now!

— The present hospices is a good time.

— I'll take on that chap.

For it was in the back of their mind's ear how they would be spreading in quadriliberal their azurespotted fine attractable net from Matt Senior to the thurrible mystagogue after him and from thence to the neighbour and that way to the puysny donkeyman and his crucifer's cauda. And in their minds years backslibris so it was how they would be meshing that way the quavers of scaly silver and the clutches of chromes of the highly lucid spanishing gold, whilst, as hour gave way to hour, with Yawn himself keeping time with his thripthongue, to ope his blurbeous lips he would the way myrrh of the moor and molten moonmist would be melding indo his mouth.
{f10, 371}

— First, if yu don't mine. Name yur historical grouns.

— This same prehistoric barrow 'tis, the orangery.
{f39, 478}

— I see. Very good now. It is in your orangery, I take it, you have your letters? Can you hear here me, you, sir?

— Thorsends. For my darling. Typette!

— So long aforetime? Can you hear better?

— Millions. For godsends. For my darling one.

— Now, to come nearer zone, I would like to raise another point audibly touching this. There is this maggers. I am told by our interpreter that there are fully six hundred and six ragwords in your malherbal Magis language for monarch but not one pronounceable term that grows in all Tallaght to signify majestate. Is such the unde derivatur casematter? Megis megis inerretur mynus hoc intelleyegow.

— C'est mal prononcé. Vos navez pas d'O dong votr bousch. Moy, jay trouvay la clee dang les champz.

— Hep there! Whu's thot talking so cloover? Whure yu?

— Trinathan Partnick Dieudonnay. Have you seen her? Typette, my tactile, O!

— Are you in your fatherick, lonely one?

— The same. Three persons. Have you seen my darling only one? I am sohohohold!

— What are yu shevering about like a houn in hell? Is there cold on ye, doraphobian? Or do yu want yur schoolmam?

— The woods of Fochlut. I hear you falling!

— Whisht awhile! I know that place better than annyone. Sure,
{f39, 479}
I used to be always over there at my grandmother's place with the long dogs coursing. That's the place for the oysters, Puldudy, county Galway. I never knew how rich I was carrying my dragoman, Meath's marvel, thass withumpronouncable tail, along the shore. Did you know Jasper Dougal that keeps The Anchor on the Mountain, Pat Whateveryournameis?

— The wolves of Fochlut! By Whydoyoucallme?

— Wisha; and that's a good wan right enough! Wooluvs no less!

— One moment now, I would like to put a question. Tell me now this. You told my larned friend rather previously a moment since about this mound or barrow. Now I suggest to you that ere there was this plaguebarrow, as you seem to call it, there was a burial boat. Would you bear me out in that? The Frenchman, I say, was an orange boat. What? Speak ab laut!

— Norsker. Her raven flag was out. Crouch low, you pigeons three! Say, call that girl with the tan tress on. Call Wolfhound! Wolf of the sea. Folchu! Folchu!

— Very good now. I will go on with the parent ship far away from those green hills. From Daneland sailed the oxeyed man. Now mark well what I say.

— Magnus Spadebeard. Signed to me with his baling scoop. Laid bare his breastpaps to give suck, to suckle me.
{f10, 373}

— O Jeyses' fluid! says the poisoned well.

— Hep! Hello there! Whu's he? Whu's this lad wi' the pups?

— Hunkalus Childared Easterheld.

— Hey! Did you dream you were atin your own tripe, acushla?

— I see, yes. You took the words out of my mouth. A child's dread for a vicefather. You mean you lived as Milky at their lyceum while you learned to howl yourself wolfwise.

— Here, howl me wiseacre's hat till I die of the milkman's lupus!

— Whaat! Whoah! Taalk very slowo!
{f39, 481}

— Hail him heathen, heal him holystone!
Courser, recourser, changechild, ..........
Eld as endall, earth .................

— Was this Ancestor yu had in Sancti Nostri or Anno Mundi.

— On a Monday I sleep. I dreamt of a Sunday. On a Monday I shall wake. Ah! May he have now fearfilled me!

— I have your tristich now. It recurs in three times the same differently. And speaking of this same famous sire of yours, Mr Tuppling Towne, would he reoccur now in city or county if you know the difference?

— Well, I am advised he might in a sense be both nevermoreless
{f10, 374}
like myself. I am afraid you could not yet heave one of your own old stepstones over a stumbledown wall here to this classic night but they would binge off the glosshouse back of a racerider in his true-to-flesh colours, either handicapped on her flat or barely repeating himself. That is a tiptipoldyfaher now, Tommy Terracotta, and he could be all our das, the brodar of the founder of the father of the author of the finder of the first man in Ranelagh.

— Muddybroth! And where do we get off, chiseller?

— Vulva! vulva! vulva! vulva!

— Macdougal or his onagrass that is, coughing. I would go near identifying you from your stavrotides. And that O'mulanchonry plucher you have from the worst coast of Ireland is no use to you either, Johnny my donkeyschott. Number four, fix up your spreadeagle and pull your weight!

— D'ye ken a young stepscholar the name of Kevin that was shooing a gagag that foun the dogumen number one?

— I no way need you, stroke oar, nor your quick handles. You're too farfast a cock of the north there, Matty Armagh, and you're south so.

— South, I see. This is much better. The man who will invent it there ultimately is the man who has discovered it there originally. That's the point of eschatology I reach for now in so many counterpoint words.
{f10, 375}
Now we have cause causing
{f39, 483}
effects and effect recausing aftereffects. Or I will twist the tale otherwise. There is a strong suspicion on counterfeit Kevin. 'Tis the bells of scandal that gave tune to grumble over him and someone between me and thee. Now, have you reasonable dubitancy in your mind about him or are you in your post? Tell me that without delay.

— I'll see you moved farther, blarneying Marcantonio! That babe, the innocent of but fifteen primes you all lionise so trilustriously, did I altermobile him to a flare in hogsfat? I know not, I am sure of, but the first mover knows I was altered to thrice myself. If I crouched low humble down in my scatological
{f39, 484}
past to confess in clean before him to my sore why did you, my sexth best friend, blather always you would be so delated to back me to Humphrey
{f10, 376}
and Nephew for such post in his night office? And then you snub round in your moving motion to the other catechumens and you say I'm uppish and none meer Irish. Well, before Avtokinatown, I may as well humbly correct that vespian now in case of temporalities. I've my pockets full comeplay of you laycreated cardonals. Watacooshy lot! My ruridecanal caste is a cut above you peregrines. Ho, look at my jailbrand High marked on me in the foreign. Aham! Eggs squawfish lean yoe nun feed marecurious!
{f39, 485}
I can self laud nilobstant to my patrician morning coat at arms with my High tripenniferry cresta proper and caudal motto: Itch dean! Eeho stay so! And Mind, praisegad, is the first praisonal Egoname Yod heard in Moy domesday book. Suck at!

— Suck it yourself, sugarstick! Misha, who's asking to luck at your sore toe? Are we spreakin Inglis landage or are you sprakin sea Djoytsch? What about your thruppenny croucher of an old fellow, tell us? What about the bonafide peachlover, esquire earwugs, before there was a sound in the world? How big was his best friend? The swaaber! The twicer! Loud's curse to him! If you hored him outerly as we harem lubberintly with his drums and bones and hums in drones, your innereer'd heerdly heer he.

— Nicey Doc Mistel Lu, please! ⁽⁷me gnemgnem walmaluky damfool.⁷⁾ Me no ⁽⁷savvy savy⁷⁾ allsame numpa one Topside Tellmastoly fella. Me savvy nothel time. Jossdam cowbellymaam belongame shepullamealong, begolla, jackinaboss belongashe. Plentymuch boohoomeo.

— Thot's never the postal cleric!
{f39, 486}
Are yu roman cawthrick 432?

— Quadrigue my yoke.
Triple my tryst.
Tandem my sire.

— Tantris. Hattrick. I see. The old order changeth and lasts like its first. Now my little psychosinology. Now I am placing that initial T square upright to your temple a moment. Do you see anything, templar?

— I see a blackfrinch pliestrycook … who is carrying on his brainpan … a cathedral of lovejelly for his … Tiens, how he is like somebodies!

— I horizont the same J and lay it lightly to your lip a little. What do you feel, liplove?

— I feel a fine lady … floating on a stillstream of isisglass … with gold hair to the bed … and white arms to the twinklers … O la la!

— I invert the initial I of your tripartite and sign it sternly on your breast. What do you hear, breastplate?

— I ahear of a hopper behidin the door slappin his feet in a pool of bran.
{f10, 378}

— Now I feel called upon to ask did it ever occur to you, qua you, prior to this, by a stretch of
{f39, 487}
your hiberborealic imagination that you might, bar accidens, be very largely substituted in potential secession from your next life by a complementary character? Upjack! Think!

— I'm trying to. Thogged, be thenked! Once or twice when I thinkled I was trying on my garden substisuit and maybe more largely nor you, quosh you, messmate, yet realise. A few times, so to shape, as I chanced to be stretching the liferight out of myself in my ericulous imagination I felt feeling a half Scotch and pottage like round my middle aging so that I indicate out to myself how that I'm not meself at all, no jolly fear, when I realise bimiselves how becomingly I to be going to become.

— O, is that the way with you, you craythur? The voice is the voice of jokeup, I fear. Are you imitating Roma now or Amor now, eh, Mr Trickpat, if you don't mind answering to my straight question?

— I won't mind answering to your straight question whereas it would be as unethical for me now to answer as it would have been nonsensical for you then not to have asked. Out of my name you call me. You knew me once but you won't know me twice. I am simpliciter arduus, Friday's child in loving and thieving.

— Let us hear!

— Dearly beloved brethren! Bruno and Nolan, the stationary lifepartners off orangey Saint Nessau Street, were explaining it
{f10, 379}
all round each other ere yesterweek. When himupon Nolan Bruno monopolises his egobruno most unwillingly senses by the mortal powers alionolan equal and opposite brunoipso, ipso, id est, eternally provoking alio opposite equally as provoked as Bruno at being eternally opposed by Nolan. Poor omniboose singalow singlearum! So is he.

— You mean an alibi, do you, suffering from the singular but enjoying on the plural?

— I mean in Australian my alibi brother Cabler who is sender of the daily telegraph every night. Assass. Dub. Ire. Starving today opening tomorrow wire splosh Cabler. Won't you join me in a small halemerry for wellmet Capeler?
{f39, 489}
Oremus poor fraternibus that he may still remain faithfully ours. I want to know with much thanks, here's ditto, if he lives in Austrasia or anywhere my fond fosther, Alibi Nolan, off the Venerable Jerrybuilt, not belonging to these parts, who I remember him to me with his roamin I suppose a teetotum obstainer. I call you my halfbrother because you in your soberer moments remind me deeply of my natural brothel C. P. Kevanagh who is dearly beloved by Sydney and Alibany.

— Who is Mr Nolan nominally?

— Mr Nolan is pronuminally Mr Gottgab.

— I get it! He stands for you before a direct object in the feminine. I see. By maiden sname. Now will you just search through your gabgut memoirs for this impersonating pronolan. Would it be a Doblinganger much about your own medium with a sandy whiskers?

— Treble Stauter of Holy Baggot Street (I surpassed him lately in Blessed Foster's Place) is doing the dirty on me with his tantrums and all these godforgiven kilowatts I'd be better off without. Toot! Detter for you, Mr Nobru! Toot toot! Better for you, Mr Anol!
{f10, 381}
{f39, 491}

— Tugbag is Baggut's. I see. We can cop that with our street that is called corkscrewed. It would be the finest boulevard billy in Europe, Patrick's, if they took the bind out of the middle of it. You told of a tryst too. I wonder now, without releasing secrets of the alcove, have I heard ⁽⁷of⁷⁾ the name anywhere?

— Marak! Marak! Marak!
Ha drappad has draraks in the parak
And ha had ta barraw tha watarcrass shartclaths aff tha arkbashap af Yarak!

— O Tara's thrush! And he said he was only taking the grass temperature for Green Thurdsday! The first time, by Thunder, he put on
{f10, 382}
his recrution trousers was when the boys wouldn't join up.
{f39, 492}

— How voice you that, nice Sandy man? Not large goodman is he, Sandy nice? Ask him this one minute in his burly ear when he dropped his Bass's to P flat.

— Well, I beg to traverse same above statement inasmuch as my dodear devere revered was confined to guardroom by my pint of his pilsen bottle which I was bringing to our aural surgeon, Doctor Achmed Borumborad, for repairs done by bollworm in the rere of pilch knickers, property of my deeply forfear revebereared, entailing a laxative tendency especially with him being forbidden fruit and certified to have emotional valvular, and thereinafter liable to succumb if served with letters of subpenis when my rupee ropure riputed husband
{f39, 493}
took a brief one out of the given mineral, telling me of a welcomed aperrytiff (he never battered one eye before paying me his duty but he looked plum into my marrymouth like the end of time
{f10, 383}
) and he simply showed me his leadpoker which was as then is produced with the remere ramind remure remark: Lithia, as this is for Sneak

— Chase me, Charley, I've got barley! Creeping through the children of Mary's class camouflaged as a blancmange and maple syrup! Three cheers for the name Dan Magrath!

— I would misdemean to rebuke to the libels of snots from the fleshmarket. The said Sully, he is Magrath's thug and smells cheaply of Power's spirits and he is not fit enough to throw guts down to a bear. If they cut his nose on the stitcher they had their good reasons. Here's to the length of my snuff and trout stocking with a mosaic of dispensations if Lynch and Company is prepared to stretch him by the starlight. Inasmuch as I am delightful to be able to state that a handsome sovereign was freely pledged in a cherrywickerbasketfull under Shadow La Rose, to both lady performers of display unquestionable by that noblesse of
{f10, 385}
leechers at his Saxon tannery with motto, O'Neill Saw Queen Molly's Pants, and much admired engraving meaning complete manly parts during alleged recent act of our chief mergey margey magistrades as required by statues. If you won't release me stop to please me up the leg of me. Now you see! Respect. Your wife. Anne.

—
{f39, 496}
Sure, that old humbugger was boycotted as I'm given now to understand. There was nobody in all Britain in Galway would come next or nigh him after that.

— Arra irraha hirarra, man, weren't they arriving fogabawlers in all their centuries like lodes of ores flocking fast to Mount Maximagnetic for to pay their firstrate duties before him, at and in the licensed boosiness premises of his reunited magazine hall, by the magazine wall, the Grand Old Magennis Mor, boot kings and indiarubber umpires and shahs from Paisley and muftis in muslim and sultana raisins and a row of jam sahibs and an odd principess in her pettedcoat and the queen of playing clubs and the Claddagh ringleaders and the two salames and the Halfa Ham with two fat maharashers and the German silver geyser, and he polished up gorgeous, tintinabulating to himself. And there was J. B. Dunlop, the
{f39, 498}
best tyrant of our times, and a queue of French wine stuarts and Tudor keepsakes and the Cesarewitch for the current counter riding up the holy staircase on muleback, hindquarters to the fore, and he holding on to his natural anthem, Horsey, keep your tail up, and as much as the vacant throneroom could safely accommodate of the house of Orange and Bitters M.P., permeated by Druids D.P. and Brehons B.P. and Flawhoolaghs F.P. and Anteparnellites P.P., all murdering Irish out of their boon companions after plenty of his fresh stout and his good balls of malt for to nobble or salvage their herobit of him, the poohpooher old basiloose, Dodderick Ogonoch Wreck, busted to the wurruld, lying high as he lay in all dimensions with a hogo round him like an Italian warehouse and his buttend up, exposed for sale after inspection, most highly astounded, as it turned up, at thus being reduced to nothing.

— D'yu mean to set there where y'are now, Sorley boy, repeating yurself, and tell me that?

— I mean to sit here where you are now, Surly guy, replete in myself, as long as I live, in my homespins, like a sleepingtop, with all that's buried of sins insince insides of me. If I can't upset this pound of pressed ollaves I can set up sound upon him.

— Oliver! He may be an earthpresence. Was that a groan or did I hear the Dingle bagpipes? Watch!

— Tris tris a ni ma mea!

— Is the world moving mound or what babel is this, tell us?

— Whoishe whoishe whoishe whoishe linking in? Whoishe whoishe whoishe?
{f39, 500}

— Lay yer lug till the groun man. They're playing thimbles and bodkins. Clan of the Gael! Hep! Whu's within?

— Dovegall and finshark they are. Ring to the rescue!

Zinzin. Zinzin.

Crum abu! Cromwell to victory!

We'll gore them and gash them and gun them and gloat on them.

Zinzin.

— O, widows and orphans, it's the yeomen! Redshanks for ever! Up Lancs!

— The cry of the deer it is! Lo, the white roe! Title! Title!

Christ in the fort! Christ in the chariotseat!

Slog and sluaghter! Rape the daughter! Choke the pope!

Awe! Cloudy father! Unsure! Nongood!

Zinzin.

Sold! I am sold! Brinabride, goodbye! Brinabride!

Pipette dear! Me! Me!

Fort! Fort! Bayroyt! March!

Me! I'm true. True! Isolde! Pipette, my precious!

Zinzin.

Brinabride, get my price! Brinabride!

My price, my precious?

Zin.

Brinabride, my price! When you sell get my price!
{f10, 389}

Zin.

Pipette! Pipette, my priceless one!

O! Mother of my tears! Believe for me! Fold thy son!

Zinzin. Zinzin.

— Now we're gettin it. Hello!
{f39, 501}

Zinzin.

— Hello! Tell your title?

Abride!

— Hellohello! Ballymacarett! Am I thru, miss?

True!

— What is the ti...?

SILENCE.

— Now, just permit me a moment. Clear the line, priority call! Sybil! Better that or this? Sybil Head this end! Better that way? Yes. Very good now. Do you remember a particular lukesummer night following a crying fair day? Better?

— Well.

— There were fires on every bald hill in holy Ireland that night. Better so?

— You may say they were.

— Were they bonfires? That clear?

— No other name would at all befit them unless that. Bonafieries! With their blue beards streaming to the heavens.

— Was it a high white night now?

— Whitest night mortal ever saw.

— Was there rain by any chance?
{f39, 502}

— Plenty.
{f10, 390}

— There fell some fall of littlewinter snow as well, I gather.

— The nicest at all.

— Did it not blow some gales rather strongly to less?

— Out of all jokes it did.

— Do you happen to recollect whether the moon was shining at all?

— Sure she was, my darling!

— And was there frostwork about and thick weather and everything?

— There was. July at its parkiest.

— One expects that kind of feeling in the sire season?

— One certainly does. And mares.

— I see. Now you know the wellknown kikkenmidden where the illassorted first couple first met with each other?
{f10, 391}

— Deed then I do. W.K.

— Is it a place fairly exposed to the four last winds?

— Well, I faithly sincerely believe so indeed, if all what I hope to charity is half true.

— Is it Woful Dane Bottom?

— It is woful in need whatever about anything else.

— There used to be a tree there stuck up?

— There used, sure enough. And the crandest consecrated maypole in all the reignladen history of Wilds. Squiremade and damesman of plantagenets, high and holy!

— What was it doing there, for instance?

— Standing foreninst us.

— You saw it visibly from your hidingplace?

— No. From my invisibly lyingplace.

— And you then took down in stereo what took place being tunc committed?

— I then tuk my takenplace lying down, I thunk I told you.

— Just how grand in cardinal rounders is this preeminent giant? I would like to hear you tell us in strict conclave what you know in petto about the sovereign beanstalk, Tonans Tomazeus.
{f10, 392}

— Your Ominence, Your Imminence and delicted fraternitree! There's Tuodore queensmaids and Idahore shopgirls and they woody babies growing upon her and Tyburn fenians snoring in his bole and crossbones strewing its holy floor and culprinse of Erasmus Smith's boys with their underhand leadpencils climbing to her crotch for the origin of spices and charlotte darlings with silkblue askmes chattering in dissent to them and the Killmaimthem pensioners chucking overthrown milestones up to her to fall her cranberries for their unnatural refection and cock robins muchmore hatching most out of his missado eggs for him, the sun and moon pegging honeysuckle and white
{f39, 505}
heather down and tomtits tapping resin there and tomahawks watching tar elsewhere, creatures of the wold approaching him, hollow mid ivy, for to claw and rub, hermits of the desert barking their infernal shins over her triliteral roots and his acorns and pinecones shooting wide on all sides out of him after the truants of the air and her leaves, my darling dearest, sinsinsinning since the night of time and each and all of their branches meeting and shaking twisty hands all over again in their new world. And encircle him circuly. Evovae!

— I've got that now. The form masculine. The gender feminine. I see. Now, are you connected with it yourself in any way? The tree, I mean.

— Upfellbowm.

— Now you are nearer the mark. Are you acquainted with a pagany better known as Toucher Thom who is? Consider yourself on the stand now and watch your words, take my advice. Let your motto be: Inter nubila numbum.

— Never you mind about my mother. I consider, if I did, I would feel frightfully ashamed of admired vice.

— He is a man of around fifty who does messages. Have you ever heard of this old boy Thom who belongs to Kimmage and is not all there being most of his time down at the Green Man with the coat on him skinside out against apparitions and systematically mixing with the public going for groceries and waltzywembling about in his accoutrements always when he would be finished with his tea? Crazy, isn't that?

— Is it that fellow? As mad as the brambles he is. Touch him. O wait till I tell you!

— We are not going yet.

— And here's what he done!

— Get out! Lately?

— How do I know? Ask the horneys.

— Now, just wash and brush up your memories a little bit. So I find I am wondering to myself in my mind was Toucher, a methodist, whose name is not really Thom, was this old son of a century, Shivering William, wearing false clothes with back buttons ostensibly for that occasion only of the wedding, I'm wondering.

— I bet you are. Well, he was wandering in his mind too for I am sorry to have to tell you they were coming down from off him.

— And were P and ꟼ, mutatis mutandis, in pretty much the same pickle?

— Prettiest pickling of mute aunties I ever bopeeped at.

— Were they now? And were they watching you as watcher as well?
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— They were watching the watched watching.

— Good. Now, retouching friend Tomsky, did you gather much from what he let drop?

— I was rooshian mad, no lie.

— I suspect you must have been.

— But I was dung sorry for him too.

— Were you sorry you were mad with him then?

— When I tell you I was rooshiamarodnimad with myself altogether, so I was, for being sorry for him.
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— How many were married on that top of all mornings, my good watcher? Everybody was thomistically drunk, I have been told, down to the clocks?

— Well, naturally. Whiskway and mortem! But the
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right reverend priest and the reverent bride eleft were sober enough.
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— I think you're wrong there about the right reverence. Magrath was best man. You saw him, or did you, if that's not irrelevant?

— I horridly did. On the stroke of the dozen. I'm sure I'm wrong but I heard the irreverend Mr Magrath kicking the old sexton, Fox-Goodman, around the sacristy while I and the other men was gickling his missus to gaggles in the hall, the divileen, with her twelve pound laugh.

— In epexegesis or on a point of order?

— I think it was about a pint of porter.
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— You don't say so! And Drysalter, father of Izod, how was he now?

— In the pink, man. Squeezing the life out of the liffey.

— The quobus quartet were there too well to the fore mastersinging always with that consecutive fifth of theirs, eh?
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— You've said it! They were simple scandalmongers! Making history all over the show!

— You are sure it was not a winker's wake you were at?

— Precisely.

— The pinkman, the squeeze, the pint with the kick. He was culping for penance while you were ringing his belle. Did the kickee, Goodman Fox, say anything important?

— Not a word.

— That sounds an isochronism. But it is good law. We may take those free kicks for granted. Happily you were not quite so successful in the process whereby you would sublimate your blepharospasmockical suppressions, it seems?

— What was that?

— Were you or were you not? Ask yourself the questions.

— Quite so.

— Now, not to mix up, cast your eyes around Capel Court. I want you, witness, to reconstruct for us as briefly as you can, in a mind's eye view, how these funeral games took place.

— Which? Sure I told you that before.

— Well, tell it to me again in that bamboozelem voice of yours. Let's have it.

— Ah, sure, eyewitness forget. 'Tis all round me hat.
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— Ah, go on now with your parrotricks! Be nice about it!

— Faith, then, first he come up the rake with a cock on his hat dragging his feet in the usual course and was ever so naas and hang me if he wasn't wanting his calico body back before he'd take his life or save his life. Then, begor, counting as many as thirty seconds like I said he kept cursing at him for the key of John Dunn's field and the way Montague was robbed to know all what went off and who burned the hay which the man, that was raging with the thirst and wanting to know what the henconvention he wanted with him, knew nothing about.

— In other words, was that how their subtler angelic warfare started?
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— Truly. That I may never!

— Did one scum then mention to the other that he was a pigheaded Swede?
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— It was turnipheaded dunce.

— That would be about half noon, pip emma, Greenwicker time, by your queer quaint quadrant?

— Would it?

— Let it be twelve thirty after a somerswatch?

— And it was eleven thirsty too befour in a sowandsuch.

— By which of your chronos, my man of four watches? Larboard, starboard, dog, or death?
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— You can imagine!

— Will you swear all the same you saw their shadows struggling diabolically over this, that and the other, their virtues pro and his principality con, near The Ruins, Drogheda Street, and kicking up the devil's own dust for the Milesian wind?

— I will. I did. They were. I swear. Like the heavenly militia. With my tongue through my toecap on the headlong stone of kismet if so 'tis the will of Whose B. Dunn.

— They must have put in some wonderful work on the quiet like. Don't you think so?

— Ay.
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— They were only berebelling or bereppelling one another with sham bottles? What sayest thou?

— That's all.

— I mean the Morgans and the Dorans.

— I know you do.

— And this pootsch went on night after night a thousand and one times, according to your cock and a biddy story? For years and years perhaps? What sayest thou?

— That's ri. From the last finger on the second foot of the fourth man to the first one on the last one of the first. That's right.

— This is not guid enough. D'yu mean to tall grand jurors on yur oath, me lad, with yur last foot foremost, that yur moon was shining and winblowing night after night, for years and years perhaps, after yu swearing to it a while back that there was reen in plenty all the time?

— Perhaps so, as you grand duly affirm. I never thought over it, faith. It was told me by Tarpey after three o'clock mass that some rain was promised to Mrs Lyons, the invalid, and he told me as what's follows. He
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was doing a walk, says she, in the feelmick's park, says he, like a tarrable Turk, says she, letting loose on his nursery and, begalla, he met Mr Michael Clery of a Tuesday who said Father MacGregor was desperate to the bad place about thassbawls and all the stairrods and for Tarpey to go and see Father MacGregor and he was to saluate that clergyman and to tell his holiness about the three shillings in the confusional and to say how Mrs Lyons was the infidel who promised to post three shillings to Mr Martin Clery for Father Mathew to put up a midnight mask of a Thrushday for more heehaw hell's flutes, my prodder again! And I never brought my cats' and dogs' blanket!

— Quatsch! What hell are yu fluking about? Will yu swear or affirm the day to yur second sight noo and recant that all yu affirmed and swore to at first sight was all paddyflaherty?
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— Ay. I affirmly swear to it that it was with my holyhagionous lips continuously poised upon the rubricated Annuals of Saint Ulstar!

— That's very guid of ye! Maybe yu wouldn't mind talling us, my labbrose lad, how very much bright cabbage d'yu draw for all yur swearing?

— Vurry nothing, I call it, for I might as well tell yous the truth. It amounts to nil in pounds or pence, not as much as the costprice of a highlandman's trousertree for the whole dumb plodding thing!

— Come on now, johnny! We weren't born yesterday. You were promised some staggerjuice anyhow?

— Yes, by the way. When?

— How would yu like to hear yur right name now, my tristy minstrel, if yur not freckened of frank comment?

— Not afrightened of Frank Annybody.

— Will you repeat that to me outside?

— I will when it suits me.

— Guid! We make fight! Raddy!

— But no, from example! What mean you?
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— Ef I chuse to put a bullet like yu through the grill for heckling, what business is that of yours, yu bullock?

— I don't know, sir. Don't ask me, sir!

— Gently, gently, Northern Ire! Let me once more. There are sordidly tales within tales, you clearly understand that? Now my other point. Did you know, whether by melanodactylism or purely libationally,
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that one of these two Crimeans with the fender, the taller man, was accused of a certain offence or of a choice of two serious charges, if you like it better that way? You did, you rogue, you?

— You hear things. Besides (and serially now) bushes have eyes, don't forget. Hah!

— Which moral turpitude would you select of the two, for choice, if you had your way? Playing bull before shebears or the hindlegs off a clotheshorse? Did any orangepeelers or greengoaters appear periodically up your sylvan family tree?

— Buggered if I know! It all depends on how much family silver you want for a nass-and-pair. Hah!

— What do you mean, sir, behind your hah?

— Nothing, sir. Hahah!

— You're a nice third-degree witness, faith! Do you think we are tonedeafs in our noses to boot? Can you not distinguish the sense, prain, from the sound, bray? Get yourself psychoanalysed!

— O begor, I can psoako-onaloose myself any time I want without your interferences.
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— 'Sample! 'Sample!

— Have you evew weflected, wepowtew, that the evil, what though it was willed, might nevewtheless lead somehow on to good towawd the genewality?

— Talking of plebiscites by a show of hands In all seriousness, has it become to dawn in you yet that the deponent, the man from Saint Yves, may have been (one is reluctant to use the passive voice), may have been as much sinned against as sinning, for if we look at it verbally perhaps there is no true noun in active nature where every bally being is becoming in its own eyeballs?

— Ladiesgent, me and Frisky Shorty and a few fleabesides was just arguing friendly like over the old party and his moral turps. What me and Frisky wants to know is thisahere. Supposing him to have taken his epscene licence before the divisional respectively as regards them male privates and or concomitantly with all common or neuter respects to them
{f39, 524}
public females as was very properly detained by the metropolitan in connection with this regrettable nuisance, touching arbitrary conduct, being in strict contravention of schedule in board of forests and works bylaws regulationing amusements section of our beloved park in pursuance me and Shorty have approached a reverend gentleman of the name of Mr Coppinger with reference to a piece of fire fittings as was most obliging in this matter of his explanations given to me and Shorty, touching what the good book says concerning the merits of early bisexualism besides him citing example given by a valued friend of the name of Mr J. P. Cockshott as owns a pretty maisonette fronting on to the South Bluffs as was telling us how Mr Cockshott, present holder of the swearing belt, he tells him, the reverend Mr Coppinger, as how he reckons himself up to seven miles of a school of herring passing themselves by the Bloater Naze from twelve and them mayriding him by the silent hour. And, reverend, he says, gut me, but them errin was as gladful as kippers could well be considering, flipping their little coppingers, pot em, the fresh little flirties, the dirty little gillybrighteners, pickle their spratties, the little smolty gallockers, and, reverend, says he, them little salty populators, says he, as sure as my briam eggs is on cockshot under noose, all them little upanddowndippies they was all of a wriggolo finsky doodah in testimonials to their early bisexualism.

— Ta hell wi' ye and yer coprulation! Pelagiarist! Y'are obsexed, so y'are!

— Wait now, Leixlip! I don't follow you that far. Was it esox lucius now or salmo ferox. You are taxing us into the driven future, are you not, with this fishery.

— Gubbernathor! Spawning all over his seven parish churches!

— Lift it now, Hosty! Hump's your mark!

— There's an old psalmsobbing lax salmoner Fogeyboren Herrin Plunderowse

Who went floundering with his boatloads of spermin spunk about

Leaping freck after every long tom and wet lizzy between Howth and Humbermouth.

Our Human Conger Eel!

— Hep! I can see him in the fesh! Up wi' yer whippy! Hold that lad! Play him!

— Pull you, sir! Olive quill does it. Did a rise?

— Never a fear but they'll
{f39, 526}
land him yet, Slitheryscales on liffeybank, times and times and a half a time with a pillow of sand to polster him.
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Do you say they will? I bet you they will. Among the shivering sedges so? Weedywaving. Or tulipbeds of Rush below.

— Grenadiers. And tell me now. Were these anglers or angelers coexistent and compresent with or without their tertium quid?

— Three in one, one and three,

Shem and Shaun and the shame that sunders them,

Wisdom's son, folly's brother.

— God bless your ginger, wigglewaggle! You're forgetting the jennyjos for the joyboys.

— Yes, sure I thought it was larking in the clover with two stripping baremaids he was that time. I was given to understand there was that one that was always mad gone on him, her first king of cloves, in Carrick-on-Shannon, county Leitrim. Sure she was near drowned in coldstreams admiration for herself, making faces at her crystal likeness in the brook after, all tossed as she was, the playactrix!

— Listen, meme mearest! Am so sorry you lost him, poor lamb! Of course I know you are a very wicked girl. And it was a very wrong thing to do. Still, you do look lovely with the coldcream I always use in the wards and derive the greatest benefit! My, you do! Simply adorable! The way they taper! Only my arms are whiter, dear. Whitehands, idler. Fairhair, frail one. Listen, meme sweety! It's only us two, meme. Of course it was downright wicked of him, really! Perfectly appalling! How he adores me simply! Still, me with you, you poor child, will make it up with a lie between us so as nobody in the convent, of course, need ever know. So, meme mearest, be free to me! And, listen, youyou beauty, I'll be true to who knows you while I lie with warm lips on the Tolka.

— How is this at all at all? Think of a maiden. Double her.
{f10, 411}
Take your first thoughts away from her. This young barlady, what exactly is she doing? Is she having a dual act herself with herself?

— Yer crackling out of yer turn, my Moonster firefly. Answer my queskins first, johnny. Ye've as much cheek on you now as would boil a cauldron of
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kalebrose. Did the market missioners, Hyde and Wombwell, fine more than sixteen per cent of chalk in the purity flour of this raw materialist? We young chaps are briefed here to know had the two generals, who have been getting nosemoney cheap and stirring up the public opinion about private balls with their legs, had they their service books in order and duly signed J. H. North and Company when discharged from their last situations? Will ye gup and tell the board in the anterim how did O'Bejorumsen or Mockmacmahonitch come into awful position of the barrel of bellywash? And why, is it any harm to ask, was this hackney man in the coombe, Fauxfitzhuorson, carrying his ark across his back when he might have been settin inside of her made up like a cabman? Where were the doughboys, three in number, directing their steps according to the liaison officer, with their trench ulcers open and their hands in their pockets contrary
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to military rules, when confronted with his lifesize obstruction? Is it a factual fact that this fancydress nordic in child's kilts and wellingtons is co-owner of a hengster's circus near North Great Denmark Street and that the shamshemshowman has been complaining to the police barracks and applying for an order of certiorari and crying about him being molested, after him having triplets, by offers of vacancies from females in this city neighing after the man ever since they seen his X-ray picture turned out in wealthy red in the sabbath sheets? Was it him that suborned a deafmute son of his to turn a Roman and gout in his bare socks, the sweep, and buy the usual jar of porter at the Morgue and Cruses and set it down before the wife with her fireman's halmet on her, bidding her mine the hoose, the strumpet, while him and his lagenloves were rampaging the roads under the noses of the constabulary? Where's that auxiliary that reported on the whole hoodlum, relying on his morse-erse wordybook and the truncheon up his tail? Recall Sickerson, the lizzyboy! Sackerson!

— Day shirker four vanfloats he verdants market.
High liquor made lust torpid dough hunt her orchid.

— Hunt her orchid! Gob, and he found it on her, right enough! Bloody old preadamite with his twohandled umberella!

— That's enough. I mean to tap the top of this, at last. And will too, if I have at first to down every mask in Trancenania. The governorgeneral himself no less! Off with your persians! Search ye the Finn! Ho, croak, evildoer! Doff!