"'Sdense!"

(48.1-50.5) Chapter three of Finnegans Wake picks up where the previous chapter left off.  These opening pages detail the fallout left after the performance of "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" and include a lot of language related to the theater, in a sense likening the figures from the last chapter to stage actors.  The performance of the ballad had a significant effect:  it "released in that kingsrick of Humidia a poisoning volume of cloud barrage."

What follows is a sort of "Where are they now?" look at the characters we met in the last chapter.  Everyone associated with the ballad's composition and performance is long gone.  They are "as much no more as be they not yet now or had they then notever been."  Foremost in this "Eyrawyggla saga" (the "whole wholume" of which the narrator says is "readable to int from and," "from tubb to buttom all falsetissues," and "antilibellous and nonactionable" -- all characteristics of the Wake as well) is, of course, Hosty (here "poor Osti-Fosti").  What ultimately became of Hosty isn't known, but he's described as having been "quite a musical genius in a small way" and it seems like he's still beloved.  O'Mara (here "poor old A'Hara") became crestfallen, joined the military, and died with his (in the dream of the Wake, O'Mara seems to have switched genders) unit overseas.  Peter Cloran (here "Poor old dear Paul Horan") became mentally ill and was institutionalized.  

Treacle Tom (here "Sordid Sam" -- I guess he wasn't poor) died painlessly one Halloween evening while drunk and "in the state of nature" (i.e., not in a state of grace).  At the time of his death, Tom/Sam is "said . . . to have solemnly said" that his dream came true.  He also waxed philosophical, basically saying that now the multitudinous selves of his "egourge" can "by the coincidance of their contraries reamalgamerge in that identity of undiscernables" in a peaceful afterlife.  That word "reamalgamerge" is great.  It's a succinct way of saying that Tom/Sam's selves are going to amalgamate and merge for the Nth time, but it's also a word that does what it means:  it takes two synonyms for "mix" and puts them together.  Nice work, Joyce.