Contents
Sources
- Campbell and Robinson’s A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake
- Tindall’s A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake
- Combined Lexicon and Occasional Summaries from Glosses of Finnegans Wake (finwake.com) and Roland McHugh’s Annotations to Finnegans Wake
100 Words
[Note: My speculation will always appear in brackets so that you can easily ignore it.]
Sources
Pages 95.02 [Beginning of Sentence] -96.01 [End of Sentence]
Campbell and Robinson’s A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake
The Skeleton Key condenses the retelling: “…The smell of him! The graces in the rossies playing him pranks! Old HCE!” “Sure,” replies another of them, “I sniffed that lad long before anyone. And I mind the time the redheaded girl, and myself were out, love-making down Sycamore Lane: “My perfume of the pampas,” says she (meaning me), putting out her netherlights, and I’d sooner one precious sip at your pure mountain dew, then enrich my acquaintance with that big brewer’s belch.’”
And so they went on, the four-bottle men, the annalists: about that old incident in the bushes – how she was lost in the ferny distance, and how he was like an earwig in an ear, anear, and the rustlings and twitterings and the raspings, and all the scandalmongers, and the laughing jack ass (Campbell and Robinson 95-96).
William York Tindall’s A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake
Tindall adds a few lines of summary and an endnote: They agreed that, although acquitted, H.C.E. stinks – like the wind of the “manure works.” So they go on, “the fourbottle men,” the four “analists” (anal and Annals of the Four Masters), reviewing Earwicker’s alleged misdemeanor in the Park…” (Tindall 92)
95.8 “Dyinboosycough.” References to Dion Boucicault and his play Arrah-na-Pogue generally appear in connection with A.L.P. or Shaun. Shaun the Post (92.13) is a character in this play (Tindall 96).
Glosses of Finnegans Wake (finwake.com)
and
Roland McHugh’s Annotations to Finnegans Wake [Entries below introduced by line numbers “l n.nn” and italicized]
95.02
gush = a whiff, smell
mon = man
l. 3 G Bock: he-goat; Grace O’Malley
Ballybock = BALLYBOUGH – Road, bridge over Tolka River, North-East Dublin, and name of surrounding area between Summerhill and Fairview. Vitriol works at Ballybough Bridge were operated by the Dublin and Wicklow Manure Co, Ltd. Baile bocht, Ir “poortown.”
tradewind = any wind that ‘blows trade’, i.e. in a constant course or way; a wind that blows steadily in the same direction (obs.)
O’Moyly = moyly – gently, demurely + Thomas Moore: Irish Melodies: song The Song of Fionnuala: ‘Silent, oh Moyle’.
l. 4 Angl rossy: impudent girl; blush: face
O’Briny = briny – salty; sea
rossie = a wandering woman; Used as a disparaging term for a woman + rossy (Anglo-Irish) – impudent girl, brazen woman (from rásach (Anglo-Irish) – rambling woman, gipsy, jilt) + song Sweet Rosie O’Grady.
chaff = to banter, rail at, or rally, in a light and non-serious manner, or without anger, but so as to try the good nature or temper of the person ‘chaffed’
l. 5 Prankquean
to do – excited and usu. exaggerated stir, bustle + today + todo (sp) – everyone.
forsailoshe = ber om forladelse! (Danish) – beg your pardon!
ginabawdy meadabawdy = song ”Comin’ through the Rye” by Robert Burns: ‘Gin a body meet a body / Comin thro’ the rye, / Gin a body kiss a body, / Need a body cry?’ = (English Translation): ‘Should a body meet a body / Coming through the rye, / Should a body kiss a body, / Need a body cry?’
yerra = a mild oath
heed = to care for, concern oneself about; to take notice of, give attention to = [he-hed = laughed]
l. 8 Gasometer: Sir John Rogerson’s Quay D; Copenhagen; Dion Bouciault (wrote:Arrah-na-Pogue, The Colleen Bawn &tc.)
gasometer = apparatus for holding and measuring gases; In James Joyce’s day, the cylindrical gasometer on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay (S bank of Liffey) was the most noticeable feature of the Dub skyline.
hooping coppin = hoop – to clasp, enclose, surround + hooping cough – a contagious disease chiefly affecting children, and characterized by short, violent, and convulsive coughs, followed by a long sonorous inspiration called the hoop (whoop) + Dublin superstition that gasworks’ air cures whooping cough (Ulysses.6.121: ‘Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures’).
l. 9 nr Cock Robin: ‘All the birds of the air’; Minnie Cunningham: male impersonator in Dan Lowrey’s Music Hall
bird = a young man, child; a maiden, a girl; a man + nursery rhyme Cock Robin: ‘All the birds of the air’.
Minxy = minxi (l) – I have urinated
l. 10 Dear Dirty Dublin; Burns: ‘John Anderson, my jo, John’
jo = sweetheart, dear
hold hard = (orig. a sporting phrase): To pull hard at the reins in order to stop the horse; hence gen. to ‘pull up’, halt, stop. Usually in imper. (colloq.)
telesmell = tele – – at distance, distant
l.12 HCE; H2S (stink)
heaving = heave – to lift, raise
l.14 North Quay Wall, D; 1132
Kay = heave – to lift, raise
l.15 Open Sesame; seaweed; White-eyed Kaffir; C.H. Chirgwin, C19 music hall entertainer; James Whiteside defended O’Connell; semen’s
Whiteside Kaffir = kaffir – one who is not a muslim, infidel + Whiteeyed Kaffir – G.H. Chirgwin, 19th century music hall entertainer, appeared in Dan Lowrey’s Music Hall (Ulysses.12.1552: ‘that whiteeyed kaffir’) + Whiteside, James (1804-76) – Dublin lawyer, defended O’Connell and William Smith O’Brien.
sayman = a maker or seller of say (a cloth of fine texture resembling serge) + semen (l) – seed + say (Anglo-Irish Pronunciation) – sea.
l.16 St. Patrick
effluvium = emanation
puffing out = to puff out – to issue, arise in puffs
thundering = awesome in virtue of impresive greatness or magnitude
l.17 I tá t-am… agat: you have a …time
cabbage (Slang) = cheap cigar
thawt = thought – rower’s bench + that
gull = a credulous person, one easily imposed upon, a dupe, simpleton, fool
pawsdeen = Fion, Paustheen – an Irish air + paistin fionn (pashtin fin) (gael) – fair-haired child; An Paistin Fionn, “The Fair-haired Girl,” a song.
l. 18 Paustheen Fionn;I go barradh: excellently; G Danke schön; Lancashire
Goborro = tomorrow + go barradh (gubore) (gael) – excellently.
good bye + go bog (gubug) (gael) – easily, softly.
Sez I = Joyce’s note: ‘- says you’
sniffed = sniff – to perceive as if by smell, to smell out, to suspect, to sneer at
when I was in my (Anglo-Irish) = when I was
l.20 Da farfar:grandfather
farfather = far out – remote, distant + farfar (Danish) – grandfather.
l.21 Dan Lowrey’s Musichall, Sycamore St. D
firstnighting = first night – the night on which a play, or a particular representation of a play, is first produced on the stage
Sycomore Lane = SYCAMORE STREET – Originally Sycamore Alley, since 1869 Sycamore Street; runs North from Dame Street to Essex Street, West of Eustace Street. Site of Dublin GPO 1709-1755, “Sycamore Tree” pub ca 1733, Dan Lowry’s Star Music Hall and Theatre of Varieties, late 19th century.
l.22 G Bett pissabeds
frisking = frisk – to move briskly and sportively; to dance, frolic, gambol, jig.
kurkle = purple
lushiness = lustiness – lustfulness; carnal nature or character; pleasantness, pleasure, delight (obs.)
pampa = the name given to the vast treeless plains of South America south of the Amazon, esp. of the Argentina and the adjacent countries
put out – to extinguish, put an end to; (of a woman) to offer oneself for sexual intercourse.
mountain dew – a fanciful term for whisky illicitly distilled on the mountains.
l.26 give a brewer’s fart: befoul oneself
belch = a slang name for poor beer.
END of Paragraph
And so they went on….Be it suck! (96.24) = And so they went on, unquam & nunquam & linseed & colic, about the whosebefore and the wheresafter & all the scandalmonkers & the poor craigs that used to be at that time living & lying & rating & riding round Nunsbelly Square. And contradrinking themselves. I differ with ye! Are you sure of that now? You’re a liar, excuse me! I will not & you’re another! And Lully holding the breach of the peace for them. To give & to take. And to forgo the past. Ah, now, it was too bad to be falling out over the the shape of theourang’s time! Well, all right Lully! And shakeahand. And schenk us more. For Craig sake. Ah, well! Be it soak!
l.27 4 canopic jars containing innards of the body surrounded Egyptian mummies; Annals of the Four Masters:I ungaim: I anoint
fourbottle = bottle (Slang) – to bugger (a woman), to engage in sodomy
unguam = unguentum (l) – ointment, perfume + unquam (l) – at any time, ever
l.28 G Anschluss: connection; umquam: ever; L nunquam: never; I longaim: I lap up
linguam (l) = tongue + song Father O’Flynn: ‘Sláinte and sláinte and sláinte again’.
Anschluss – annexation or union, spec. of Austria to Germany
anear = close, near
l.30 G fern; found dead
rustling = a rustling sound; bustling activity + (notebook 1924): ‘night noises rustlings twittering raspin tingling scuttling’ → The dense African forest by night was full of sounds, all intimately known to the native. Crawford: “For the hundreds of night-sounds — rustlings, twitterings, raspings, tinglings, and roarings — are all known to even Africa’s tot, the ears being called his ‘eyes of darkness.’” These two poetical observations both made it into the Wake. The night sounds appear in I.4 on FW 095.31, when the ‘fourbottle men’ are discussing how Anna Livia got lost in he[“the”?] woods (Robbert-Jan Henkes)
twittering = light tremulous chirping of a bird or birds; a sound resembling or likened to this
rasping = a grating sound
l. 31 cuckooings
painting = colouring, pictorial decoration, a picture + panting
uukuings = cuckoo – to utter the call of the cuckoo (uniformly repeated call), or an imitation of it.
l.32 boycott
hist = a sibilant exclamation used to enjoin silence
springaparts = to spring apart – to burst asunder
bybyscuttlings = by by – bye bye + scuttle – to run with quick, hurried steps + [to intentionally sink a ship]
scandalmunkers = scandalmonger – one who makes injurious report concerning another which may be the foundation of legal action.
craig = crag + crag – a steep or precipitous rugged rock; the throat, the neck.
rating = rate – to estimate the (nature) worth or value of; to appraise, value; to drive away, to scold.
buds = bod (bud) (gael) – penis + proverb A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
END of Page
jackass – a male ass, a he-ass + (notebook 1924): ‘jackass (Austr. bird)’ → Jespersen: The Growth and Structure of the English Language 159n (sec. 157): ‘The settler heard a bird laugh in what he thought an extremely ridiculous manner, its opening notes suggesting a donkey’s bray – he called it the ‘laughing jackass.’ His descendants have dropped the adjective, and it has come to pass that the word ‘jackass’ denotes to an Australian something quite different from its meaning to other speakers of our English tongue’.
END 96.01
gush = a whiff, smell
l. 8 Gasometer: Sir John Rogerson’s Quay D; Copenhagen; Dion Bouciault (wrote:Arrah-na-Pogue, The Colleen Bawn &tc.)
gasometer = apparatus for holding and measuring gases; In James Joyce’s day, the cylindrical gasometer on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay (S bank of Liffey) was the most noticeable feature of the Dub skyline.
hooping coppin = hoop – to clasp, enclose, surround + hooping cough – a contagious disease chiefly affecting children, and characterized by short, violent, and convulsive coughs, followed by a long sonorous inspiration called the hoop (whoop) + Dublin superstition that gasworks’ air cures whooping cough (Ulysses.6.121: ‘Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures’).
telesmell = tele – – at distance, distant
“H2CE3 that would take a township’s
breath away!”
l.12 HCE; H2S (stink)
heaving = heave – to lift, raise
Hydrogen sulfide is a chemical compound with the formula H2S. It is a colorless chalcogen-hydride gas, and is poisonous, corrosive, and flammable, with trace amounts in ambient atmosphere having a characteristic foul odor of rotten eggs.[11] The underground mine gas term for foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide-rich gas mixture
l.17 I tá t-am… agat: you have a …time
cabbage (Slang) = cheap cigar
sniffed = sniff – to perceive as if by smell, to smell out, to suspect, to sneer at
when I was in my (Anglo-Irish) = when I was
pampa = the name given to the vast treeless plains of South America south of the Amazon, esp. of the Argentina and the adjacent countries
put out – to extinguish, put an end to; (of a woman) to offer oneself for sexual intercourse.
mountain dew – a fanciful term for whisky illicitly distilled on the mountains.
l.26 give a brewer’s fart: befoul oneself
belch = a slang name for poor beer.
100 Words: A few words about the personal exploration of this month’s text
[These entries are somewhat random, thoughts that arise from reading the text and brief research about the page. These are hardly intended to be academic criticism.]
Everyone agrees that HCE has an odor that arrives before he does. His powerful, natural scent is described as a brewer’s belch (flatulence) or manure in great quantity. He is also known for smelling like the gasworks off Rogerson’s Quay. The Dublin Gasworks fills the air with a stench of Hydrogen Sulphide reminiscent of rotten eggs. H2S may be foul but is also a treatment for curing whooping cough in children. As always Earwicker’s offenses are offset to some degree by his left-handed blessings. He is both a boon and a bane on humanity. As for his self-righteous accuser, his wench-for-pay describes his manly scent as a pampas perfume, thus comparing his bouquet to that of the gaucho. Those Argentine and Uruguayan cowboys lived a wild and undisciplined lives collecting ferral cattle and horses into large herds. Once the herds were of sufficient size they would produce the same fragrance that HCE is said to bear (like the manure works).
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