"Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be."

(214.10-216.5)  While finishing their duties, one washerwoman shouts that she sees a figure in the distance:  "the great Finnleader himself."  This would signal a return of HCE, but her counterpart doesn't believe it.  She says, "Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper!"  Unsatisfied to stop there, she accuses the woman who had the vision of being drunk.  After some more talk about how hard they've been working, the vision appears to the woman again:  "Holy Scamander, I sar it again!"  But the other woman's still not having it.  "Subdue your noise, you hamble creature!" she shoots back.  "What is it but a blackburry growth or the dwyergray ass them four old codgers owns."

With night imminent, the women see a light in the distance, which could be a lighthouse or a boat.  The washing's done, so the women begin to take their leave of each other.  Before they go, though, they share final remembrances of ALP and HCE:  "Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes!  And sure he was the quare old buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls and dotthergills."  The women recognize that the family cycle will go on and on:  "Teems of times and happy returns.  The seim anew.  Ordovico or viricordo."  (This references Vico's theory of history as an endless cycle.)

Now the river has widened and begun flowing to the point where the distance and noise keep the women from understanding each other.  "Are you not gone ahome?" one asks.  "What Thom Malone?" the other replies, repeating what she thought she heard.  "I feel as old as younder elm," says one, referencing the idea from yesterday that the two women are turning into the stone and tree from the fable of the Mookse and the Gripes.  "A tale told of Shaun or Shem?" replies the other, mishearing what her opposite has said and hinting at what's to come in the Wake.  The chapter ends fittingly with one of the women encouraging the story to go on, while the day of the chapter -- and the first book of the Wake -- arrives at its completion:

Night now!  Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!  Night night!  Telmetale of stem or stone.  Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of.  Night!

And that's the conclusion of the eighth chapter, as well as the first book.  We've come a long way -- 216 of the Wake's 628 pages -- but we have a longer way to go.  Time, and the story, go on.  Bring on the tale of Shem and Shaun.