"where the possible was the improbable and the improbable the inevitable"

(110.1-112.8)  As we go further into the fifth chapter of Finnegans Wake, we gather more information about ALP's letter.  After yesterday's foray into literary theory, the narrator today presents "a few artifacts" for our consideration.  First is the somewhat fantastical nature of the letter's contents.  Ireland, we're told, has been said to be the place "where the possible was the improbable and the improbable the inevitable."  If this is true, the narrator says, "we are in for a sequentiality of improbable possibles."  But really, though, the narrator says no one should be surprised if this is the case, because "for utterly impossible as are all these events they are probably as like those which may have taken place as any others which never took person at all are ever likely to be."  Essentially, this paragraph is a parody of and tribute to the work of "Harrystotalies," or Aristotle.  It presents the philosophical underpinnings of the letter (and the Wake) but it (theoretically) keeps us entertained as well.

Next up on the narrator's list of artifacts is the hen who finds the letter in the dump in Phoenix Park.  In "Midwinter," a child sees the hen picking through the dump.  After coming upon some orange peels (that seem to be just above a layer of actual orange grove in the dump), HCE's son, Kevin, sees the hen come upon the letter and seizes it.  Apparently, Kevin -- aka Shaun -- has "euchr[ed]" the letter from his brother, the "heily innocent" Jerry/Shem.  This act of treachery among brothers is another in the series of skirmishes that have taken place on this battlefield in the park, another "dual a duel to die to day."

The narrator next names the hen as "Belinda of the Dorans," a prize hen in her fifties, and explains that Belinda uncovered the letter at midnight.  The letter, which was sent from Boston, Massachusetts, contains some seemingly trite updates on the goings-on in the writer's life, but these trite updates contain a number of parallels with what we've already read in the Wake.  The letter also bears a tea stain that the narrator says (in one sense) marks it as a genuine relic of ancient Irish peasant poetry.

But the letter isn't in pristine condition.  The narrator compares it to a photographic negative that has melted.  While it sat in the heat among the oranges in the dump, the letter has been physically altered, and "the farther back we manage to wiggle the more we need the loan of a lens to see as much as the hen saw."  Like the Wake, it's hard to tell whether anything we're reading is accurate.

The final paragraph of today's reading is written in a mock-colloquial style, but its a significant one nevertheless.  We might not understand what's happening here -- the Wake may be "a puling sample jungle of woods" -- but, once again, the narrator tells us not to be discouraged.  The perhaps mythical authorities might be in possession of the authoritative interpretation of the letter and the Wake, but any studious person "may pick a peck of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne."  With that in mind, let's keep on keeping on.